A lot of craftsmanship and fine materials go into making musical instruments, and this is why they can be extremely expensive. For example, a beginner trumpet can cost anywhere from $300-$1,000. University of Michigan engineering student, and Thingiverse user, Daniel Olson may have come up with an alternative to shelling out lots of money for a beginner trumpet. He’s created a fully printable and playable trumpet! The assembly is composed of 17 pieces, printed in ABS plastic, that snap together to create the instrument. The only non-3D printed parts are 3 metal springs used for the valves. Inspiration for the design was loosely based on his Bach Stradivarius.
Olson advises that this isn’t a quick project, and can take more than a week to complete. Some of the more complex pieces took up to seventeen hours to print, and the majority of the parts required post-printing work to make them functional. While he divided the design into connectable segments, some of the pieces are still too large for the average FDM printer. Daniel was able to accommodate these large parts by utilizing his MendelMax 2.0’s generous build volume.
Unfortunately, Olson’s model doesn’t quite produce the same sound quality as the more refined Stradivarius. He openly admits, “the sound quality and playability is honestly pretty bad.” Some of the lack of sound quality can be attributed to the printed trumpet’s material. Plastic won’t help the sound resonate anywhere near as well as brass does in a traditional trumpet. There’s no threat of 3D printed trumpets replacing professional versions anytime soon, but they could be a good alternative for those who want to start learning trumpet. Due to the design’s current playability issues, Olson doesn’t recommend this trumpet to beginners. However, with a few revisions, it’ll be a cheap way of getting that first instrument to start someone on his or her musical journey!
Olson recognizes there’s still plenty of room for improvements to his design, and is hoping that people will modify and improve upon it. With help from the 3D printing and design community, this 3D printed trumpet could help musically inspire kids! For more photos be sure to check out the album of build photos.
Interesting when you think that Charlie (The Bird) Parker played a plastic saxophone towards the end of his life.
“There’s no threat of 3D printed trumpets replacing professional versions anytime soon, but they could be a good alternative for those who want to start learning trumpet.”
I’m not so sure about this… the printed trumpet seems to have some major issues with cleanly hitting the overtones and getting them to sound in-tune. These are things an experienced player could overcome, but would be disastrous for a beginner — equivalent to giving them a leaky instrument to learn on.