[math-fun] 3D printers & musical instruments
I was at a symphony concert last night & I started thinking about "high tech" musical instruments (or the lack thereof). It occurred to me that a lot of existing instruments could be partially or wholly made using 3D printers. But then it also occurred to me that whole new classes of instruments could be made using 3D printers that could never be fabricated in any other way. For example, many instruments have resonant chambers of varying sizes (i.e., frequencies) and other characteristics. But stereo speaker cabinets also have resonant chambers of varying sizes. By using a 3D printer, it should be possible to make instruments (including speaker housings) with many, many different resonant frequencies and characteristics. While 3D printing may not be cheap enough for large volume :-) production, it is cheap enough for home experimentation. I'm curious if anyone has married *fractal* patterns and musical instruments & audio speakers with 3D printers? Also, I don't think that the final word has been said about antennae for the electromagnetic spectrum. There may be sophisticated antennae which can only be fabricated using 3D printing, and which have much more interesting properties than the simply antennae we learned as EE undergrads.
Fractal antennas are being used in the wild: https://hackaday.com/2018/06/12/teardown-locates-fractal-antenna/ And it's fairly common for people to use cnc routers to cut speaker shapes out as a bunch of layers: https://goo.gl/images/ikaRyo Much cheaper than plastic filament and mdf has good acoustic properties. There's some neat algorithmic architecture too: https://goo.gl/images/f8hKdm I like your idea of fancy instrument shapes. On Sun, Jul 15, 2018, 6:22 PM Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com> wrote:
I was at a symphony concert last night & I started thinking about "high tech" musical instruments (or the lack thereof).
It occurred to me that a lot of existing instruments could be partially or wholly made using 3D printers. But then it also occurred to me that whole new classes of instruments could be made using 3D printers that could never be fabricated in any other way.
For example, many instruments have resonant chambers of varying sizes (i.e., frequencies) and other characteristics. But stereo speaker cabinets also have resonant chambers of varying sizes.
By using a 3D printer, it should be possible to make instruments (including speaker housings) with many, many different resonant frequencies and characteristics.
While 3D printing may not be cheap enough for large volume :-) production, it is cheap enough for home experimentation.
I'm curious if anyone has married *fractal* patterns and musical instruments & audio speakers with 3D printers?
Also, I don't think that the final word has been said about antennae for the electromagnetic spectrum. There may be sophisticated antennae which can only be fabricated using 3D printing, and which have much more interesting properties than the simply antennae we learned as EE undergrads.
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Also people are printing 3D holograms, which are essentially fully engineered phase plates. Meta-materials like this can produce all kinds of interesting acoustic effects. Possibly even more interesting when interacting with our built-in non-linear acoustic processing. --R Holograms for acoustics Kai Melde1, Andrew G. Mark1, Tian Qiu1 & Peer Fischer1,2 518 | NATURE | VOL537 | 22 september 2016 On Sun, Jul 15, 2018 at 11:48 PM, Jason Holt <credentiality@gmail.com> wrote:
Fractal antennas are being used in the wild: https://hackaday.com/2018/06/12/teardown-locates-fractal-antenna/
And it's fairly common for people to use cnc routers to cut speaker shapes out as a bunch of layers: https://goo.gl/images/ikaRyo
Much cheaper than plastic filament and mdf has good acoustic properties.
There's some neat algorithmic architecture too: https://goo.gl/images/f8hKdm
I like your idea of fancy instrument shapes.
On Sun, Jul 15, 2018, 6:22 PM Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com> wrote:
I was at a symphony concert last night & I started thinking about "high tech" musical instruments (or the lack thereof).
It occurred to me that a lot of existing instruments could be partially or wholly made using 3D printers. But then it also occurred to me that whole new classes of instruments could be made using 3D printers that could never be fabricated in any other way.
For example, many instruments have resonant chambers of varying sizes (i.e., frequencies) and other characteristics. But stereo speaker cabinets also have resonant chambers of varying sizes.
By using a 3D printer, it should be possible to make instruments (including speaker housings) with many, many different resonant frequencies and characteristics.
While 3D printing may not be cheap enough for large volume :-) production, it is cheap enough for home experimentation.
I'm curious if anyone has married *fractal* patterns and musical instruments & audio speakers with 3D printers?
Also, I don't think that the final word has been said about antennae for the electromagnetic spectrum. There may be sophisticated antennae which can only be fabricated using 3D printing, and which have much more interesting properties than the simply antennae we learned as EE undergrads.
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Hello, they made one experiment once to make a violin from scratch using a design based on acoustic and physics only, they actually succeeded in making one, the sound was good, even comparable to a Stradivarius, it worked, the only thing is that the violin was ugly. The article was on Scientific American a long time ago. I think that 3D printing is about the same, we probably could print a violin, it could also sound pretty good, but it won't replace the look and feel and lightness of a wooden real model. Does anybody ever saw the film : The Red Violin ? Best regards, Simon Plouffe
Airplanes don't have feathers. Given 3D printing and full acoustic simulation, why would you make a "violin". That design came from another set of constraints (properties of wood, available configuration tools, etc.). New instrument would be based on other constraints, which could use principles of aesthetics. --R On Mon, Jul 16, 2018 at 3:34 AM, Simon Plouffe <simon.plouffe@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello,
they made one experiment once to make a violin from scratch using a design based on acoustic and physics only, they actually succeeded in making one, the sound was good, even comparable to a Stradivarius, it worked, the only thing is that the violin was ugly. The article was on Scientific American a long time ago.
I think that 3D printing is about the same, we probably could print a violin, it could also sound pretty good, but it won't replace the look and feel and lightness of a wooden real model. Does anybody ever saw the film : The Red Violin ?
Best regards, Simon Plouffe _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
Robert C. Martin has written a PDP-8 emulator for the iPad: http://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2015/02/21/ModeBImperative.html Andrew
There are 3D printed violins, but they are indeed too heavy. There are electric violins with lovely 3D printed pieces, and there is some hope for customizing such instruments to the anatomy of the artist, and that might be worth the cost of the instrument (for jazz or country musicians). Let me note (a 441 A) in passing that the mystique of a Strad is largely due to marketing hype from a couple of hundred years ago. Yes, they are generally very good instruments, but they have been modified from their original construction to meet modern demands (and to repair them from sometimes awful injuries!). Newly minted instruments from a master luthier can sound equally good. In considering design alternatives based on "aesthetics", it is important to consider the artist as part of that. The instrument must respond to control by the artist, it must be predictable, it must have a range of dimensions and an intuitive interface with tactile feedback. I think that this might be achieved with nanomaterials and active control. I've no idea how to do this, nor if it amounts to "reinvent wood." Hilarie On Mon, 16 Jul 2018 at 09:22:19 -0400 Richard Howard contended:
Airplanes don't have feathers. Given 3D printing and full acoustic simulation, why would you make a "violin". That design came from another set of constraints (properties of wood, available configuration tools, etc.). New instrument would be based on other constraints, which could use principles of aesthetics.
--R
On Mon, Jul 16, 2018 at 3:34 AM, Simon Plouffe <simon.plouffe@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello,
they made one experiment once to make a violin from scratch using a design based on acoustic and physics only, they actually succeeded in making one, the sound was good, even comparable to a Stradivarius, it worked, the only thing is that the violin was ugly. The article was on Scientific American a long time ago.
I think that 3D printing is about the same, we probably could print a violin, it could also sound pretty good, but it won't replace the look and feel and lightness of a wooden real model. Does anybody ever saw the film : The Red Violin ?
Best regards, Simon Plouffe _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
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participants (6)
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Andrew Trevorrow -
Henry Baker -
Hilarie Orman -
Jason Holt -
Richard Howard -
Simon Plouffe