3D Printed Ukulele

Koa Soprano

Koa Soprano

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3D Printed Ukulele - Sound Clip Post #3

This is a Ukulele I printed on a Stratasys Dimension 1200es 3D Printer. It is used for prototyping at my work, and I have recently done basic training in Solid Works 2013 to design parts to be printed. I was able to design and print this full sized 13.875" scale length ukulele in my spare time in about a week. The material is ABSplus, and one neck, body and set of pegs cost about $170 to print.

Here is the neck, the headstock is real short due to the 12" of printing height. The total printing area is 10"x10"x12" so the neck and body will be printed separately, with a dovetail holding them together.

3duke01.jpg


Here is the body. .070" thick all over, except on the edges where I gave it a 1/4" round over on the inside and 1/8" round over on the outside effectively creating a lining to reinforce the edges. It only has two top braces and a bridge plate, no back braces. Full size dovetailed neck block but only a minimal tailblock.

3duke02.jpg


I pulled the separate parts into an assembly file to get this picture.

3duke03.jpg
 
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Here is the printer in action. Took about 37 hours to print this job. I also printed two sets of violin style tuning pegs. One was printed vertically the other horizontally to see which would work better, which ended up being the horizontally printed pegs.

3duke05.jpg


For some strange reason the frets didn't print on the fingerboard. It seems if the neck is in a certain orientation in the printer software the frets were eliminated. I originally printed it vertically, so I printed a second horizontally, which allowed me to redesign a more normal looking headstock by printing it diagonally on the plate.

3duke06.jpg


Here is a shot of the neck in the printer software, right after the .STL is processed. The gray stuff is the support material. Most of it can be broken off but the remainder is dissolved off in a heated tank of solvent.

3duke07.jpg


Here are the two necks for comparison. The vertically printed neck has a much nicer finish, but for some reason the frets wouldn't print. The second horizontally printed one printed the frets but the angle of the dovetail printed funny.

3duke08.jpg
 
Here it is strung up. Sounds remarkably like a ukulele. To get playable action I had to fit the neck like a regular ukulele do to the dovetail printing funny. I was hoping to just pop it in but the action was way too high. I have not yet glued it. While fitting it up I realized the angle on my tuning peg holes and tuning pegs themselves are off. I meant to make them all 2 degrees like my violin peghole reamer and pegshaver but I accidently made them 2 degree per side so they came out to 4 degrees. Fortunately they still work and fairly well for just the printed surfaces, as I was expecting to have to clean them up with my tools.

3duke09.jpg


3duke10.jpg


3duke11.jpg


Sound clip! I don't really play but I threw together some chords.

 
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Fascinating! Do you have a sound sample? I'm curious how it plays.
 
That's a real Sci-Fi Uke there! Amazing! I am so gobsmacked by 3D printing! Even Star Trek didn't see that one coming! ;)
 
Don't know about a case, it would need to be done in pieces and glued together. As for sound, I have no samples and can't really play anyways. I'd say it mellower and maybe not as punchy as a Koa one I compared it to (both ukes have Aquila Nylguts).
 
Nice man, very cool, when people ask me what a 3D printer is I give them the example of making a uke. I am trying to save for a 3D printer and will try to make a uke too!
 
Phenomenally cool.
 
Makes me wonder if I should put off buying a very expensive carbon fiber uke from Blackbird.
Thanks for sharing!
 
Insanely awesome that you saw this through to production! Granted, printing the instrument doesn't quite make economic sense given the lower-cost manufacturing options, but this is certainly very novel.
 
Wow! Thanks for sharing the pics. What a great learning experience. I'm envious!
 
That is really cool! Any chance on finding out how much something like that would cost? Heck I would just like to get ahold of one of the necks! So... Any chance of selling them? :)
 
Koa Soprano said:
Thanks guys. I may make a second and make a few changes soon.
Click to expand...

This is awesome.
Is there a window where you can see the uke being made?
If so, could you record part of it?
It would be cool to see how the printer "prints" it :D
 
nobodyspecial said:
This is awesome.
Is there a window where you can see the uke being made?
If so, could you record part of it?
It would be cool to see how the printer "prints" it :D
Click to expand...

It's actually extremely boring to watch. There are videos on youtube showing what happens. The printer head just goes back and forth, the cool factor of watching it for the first time wore off after like 30 seconds.

UkuleleHill said:
That is really cool! Any chance on finding out how much something like that would cost? Heck I would just like to get ahold of one of the necks! So... Any chance of selling them? :)
Click to expand...

My materials cost for a full uke is around $70. I wouldn't mind selling them once I make a few alterations and work out a cost, if there was a market.
 
Maybe one of the coolest threads. ever. Thanks so much for taking the plunge.
 
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