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3D "Printer" - and its possibilities in lutherie.


MANFIO

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I see this is up again...Manfio good to see you on board.... I think this could have applications in acoustic research as well. By using known -repeatable qualities this could really help in defining tonal qualities when it comes to plate shapes and archings ect.... by changing the shape but not the materials or vice versa a researcher could do actual control experiments. I bet that in the near future, as indicated, by using diffrent densities and color mix.... who knows.... I am sure that the hills would have loved color printing.....get ready for a Brave new world.

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These things were just becoming widely used (i.e. not ridiculously expensive) when I retired from aerospace a few years ago. Fabulous for making prototypes from CAD models... but you still end up with a plastic part. I see they do have laser metal sintering printers now, too... that should be handy for some things, but probably much more costly than the plastic versions.

If you want a plastic or metal violin, go ahead and have one printed up. Betcha it won't sound too good.

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Don, or anyone, I understand that it probably will not sound "good" but do you see any application in perhaps using a printer to narrow the field in research and developement? that is to say playing with,changing only one aspect at a time with uniform materials as a method of determing say volume or arch shape. It also seems that by varing densities, grain patterns might be emulated? I can also see speed of production as a viable issue in research. quicker data sets for comparison. just thoughts.

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Don, or anyone, I understand that it probably will not sound "good" but do you see any application in perhaps using a printer to narrow the field in research and developement?

I can't think of anything I would want to do with a plastic model... except perhaps paint it and hang it on the wall. The acoustic properties are too far removed from wood to be of much use, in my opinion.

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For someone looking to copy a great instrument, a "print" would be fantastic... accurate to 40 microns???

E

Watch this space. I have no doubt someone, probably the Strad, will be selling accurate 3D prints of plates and scrolls of some of the major instruments within the next couple of years. Brilliant idea.

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Obviously there isn't any great value in acoustic study, here. However, as it's been said, creating a cast of an instrument this way would be of fantastic value. Imagine being able to go to The Strad's website and buy a cheap, perfect plastic cast of any scroll you wanted, any plate you wanted. Wouldn't that just be marvelous?

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I first saw this sort of machine on a Jay Leno clip, and posted it to MN here. There it was being used to create casts for car parts. The idea pops up every so often, so I hope we soon get to the point where these sort of casts are available to us common folk.

The first workshop I attended had plaster casts of nice instruments, and that was a tremendous eye-opener to me. It's hard to catch the possibilities in a photo, but in hand, the cast of a plate reveals all sorts of details -- not acoustic but physical. I don't have any photos of a plate cast, but here's one of the scroll for the Stradivari "Red Diamond."

post-24063-0-55534600-1310239848_thumb.jpg

You can imagine it would be nice to have this in hand while carving our own scroll.

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Obviously there isn't any great value in acoustic study, here. However, as it's been said, creating a cast of an instrument this way would be of fantastic value. Imagine being able to go to The Strad's website and buy a cheap, perfect plastic cast of any scroll you wanted, any plate you wanted. Wouldn't that just be marvelous?

Acoustically, I wonder how "plate tuners" could reconcile a copied plate [grads & all] with whatever piece of wood they'd be carving.

Jim

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"Acoustically, I wonder how "plate tuners" could reconcile a copied plate [grads & all] with whatever piece of wood they'd be carving."

I've often wondered the same thing, and remember once in a past post Michael Darnton suggesting that one could do much worse than a literal copy...

(Hope I didn't misunderstand you Michael)

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Acoustically, I wonder how "plate tuners" could reconcile a copied plate [grads & all] with whatever piece of wood they'd be carving.

Jim

Wood =/= Plastic.

Correct me if I'm not understanding your point.

Edit: also, I don't put a tremendous amount of stock in plate tuning. But let's not turn this thread into another one of those dead ends.

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Wood =/= Plastic.

Correct me if I'm not understanding your point.

I just meant IF one gets one of these perfect copies with possible fallen/distorted arch and whatever the original grads were, then there's still no gaurantee a 'copy' [of that] in wood will sound anything like the original Stradivari, Guarneri, etc.

Jim

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