3D-printed flutes hit new notes | Researchers have found a way to 3D print instruments that produce notes unattainable through traditional instruments.
Hand-crafted instruments are all well and good, but the precision of 3D printing is starting to unlock new sounds.
Leading a team of researchers from the University of Wollongong in Australia, Dr Terumi Narushima took the existing mathematical models used to determine how various notes are produced by wind instruments, and created a 3D model of a flute that – due to its customised diameter, length, and hole placement – produced unique microtonal notes smaller than a semitone.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday July 07 2015, @04:40PM
The pix in the article look like the recorder I printed:
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:12862 [thingiverse.com]
I can't find the link to a scad file to create arbitrary flute / recorder / whistles but there is something like that out there, seemingly unrelated to the linked article. Stories like this would benefit by a link to the project's github account or thingiverse or whatever they use.
Comparing the printed recorder to a $8 Yamaha, its a lot harder to use, or doesn't sound as good for a given amount of effort. On the other hand it used a lot less than $8 worth of plastic. Yet on the other, other hand, it represented something like 16 hours of printing time.
Now there is a company that sells a little $20 piece of plastic for flutes that you rest your finger on to help hold the flute, and that is the kind of thing that would make sense to print.