3d printed whistles, take 2?

[Terry McGee]

Heh heh, you'll remember I said:

What bits are 3D Printed in your example? The head and body presumably. Ferrules (rings)? Tuning slide? (Surely not!)

So much relieved to see that now in brass! Well done, Wanderer.

And thanks for allowing us to look over your shoulder while you're doing all this. Very exciting!

Any thoughts as to what comes next?

[Wanderer]

So much relieved to see that now in brass! Well done, Wanderer.

And thanks for allowing us to look over your shoulder while you're doing all this. Very exciting!

Any thoughts as to what comes next?

Yeah..I'm rough on whistles, and I snapped one at the tuning slide. Being rough with it, of course And I figured if I'm gonna break them, other people probably will too, so I found a seller on Amazon selling the exact size OD/ID tubing I needed that I could cut down to lengths.

I'm pretty happy with how things are now. Now, I think it's just incremental improvements to the process. Some better finishing tools, etc. I'm printing them in all the colors I have here in at the house, to see which filaments are suitable for making whistles. It turns out, not all of them are. I have a "metal" filament that's steel-colored and has bits of actual metal in it. That one came off the printer this morning and was a big failure. Even with my super precise deburring tool, I couldn't cut a clean ribbon off of the material. It ended up with lots of little tear-outs and jaggies. The blade wouldn't make a sound right off the bed (which is unusual these days) but I generally can fix that--but not with this material. There was just no salvaging it.

I'm also trying to source cheaper tubing. I would've used Smallparts.com years ago to get it, but Amazon evidently bought them out and then killed off the cheap materials. Right now, it's costing me $8.00 a foot for what I'm using, which is easily 4-5 times higher than I expected to pay.

I've started posting vids on the various FB tinwhistle groups, and if someone wants one, I imagine I'll sell them one. I've sold a small handful so far. If I keep getting positive feedback on them, I imagine I'll be standing up a website in the next month or two and open shop, I guess

[Terry McGee]

I'm pretty happy with how things are now. Now, I think it's just incremental improvements to the process. Some better finishing tools, etc. I'm printing them in all the colors I have here in at the house, to see which filaments are suitable for making whistles. It turns out, not all of them are. I have a "metal" filament that's steel-colored and has bits of actual metal in it. That one came off the printer this morning and was a big failure. Even with my super precise deburring tool, I couldn't cut a clean ribbon off of the material. It ended up with lots of little tear-outs and jaggies. The blade wouldn't make a sound right off the bed (which is unusual these days) but I generally can fix that--but not with this material. There was just no salvaging it.

Wow.

I'm also trying to source cheaper tubing. I would've used Smallparts.com years ago to get it, but Amazon evidently bought them out and then killed off the cheap materials. Right now, it's costing me $8.00 a foot for what I'm using, which is easily 4-5 times higher than I expected to pay.

Interesting. I imagine you'd get a number of slides out of each stick, so that cost doesn't sound high. But that probably tells us that I haven't considered the price competition in the whistle market! Penny whistle, and all that!

I've started posting vids on the various FB tinwhistle groups, and if someone wants one, I imagine I'll sell them one. I've sold a small handful so far. If I keep getting positive feedback on them, I imagine I'll be standing up a website in the next month or two and open shop, I guess

Wow, how exciting.

Then there will come the Session version, the Quiet-as-a-Church-Mouse version, the "all the different keys" versions, the full sets, the "can you do a version to match my eyes?" versions, etc, etc. And then someone will ask about flutes....

Keep us in touch!

[Wanderer]

Interesting. I imagine you'd get a number of slides out of each stick, so that cost doesn't sound high. But that probably tells us that I haven't considered the price competition in the whistle market! Penny whistle, and all that!

My goal with these things is to produce as good of a quality whistle as I can while still keeping the price as affordable as possible. That means saving pennies anywhere possible without sacrificing quality to do so. I don't really want to become yet another $100-300-per-whistle whistle maker. It kind of runs back to my first forays into whistledom years and years ago when it was near-impossible to find affordable folk music on the internet. I was terribly offended that I had to pay somewhere around $5.00 a tune to get out-of-copyright sheet music for folk tunes on the web, so I spent some of my own money and started putting those tunes up for free. Now, of course, there are sites that are much more well known and used than mine, but I don't mind that one bit. Goal accomplished.

I don't want people to feel like they have to spend that kind of money. I mean, I'm not going to kill that market, for sure. I just contacted Fred Rose to get one of his whistles...but I want to kind of blur that line between "starter whistle" price and "decent whistle" price. (And please, let's not muddy this thread up with yet another decades-old discussion about how Generations are just fine. I know that there are plenty of folks who hold to that. And I don't deny them their opinion. Horses for courses. You know who you are...resist the temptation lol!).

These tuning slides add just shy of $1.00 USD to the end production price, which isn't crazy, and I can live with it. But if I could make a slide for $0.25 for the same quality, there's no reason not to spend a little effort to find a source.

Wow, how exciting.

Then there will come the Session version, the Quiet-as-a-Church-Mouse version, the "all the different keys" versions, the full sets, the "can you do a version to match my eyes?" versions, etc, etc. And then someone will ask about flutes....

Keep us in touch!

I'm trying not to look too far into the future, or let myself get too excited about it. I'm just trying to take things as they come and if becoming a big whistle maker doesn't pan out, I won't get too bent out of shape about it. I'm mostly excited that I've managed to make some whistles that don't seem to suck

Perhaps my next foray will be designing a C whistle though I imagine Cs and all of the little D variants are a niche market compared to the standard D. Honestly, the next thing I'm interested in is looking into more robust plastics. The plastic I'm using is sustainable, not petroleum based, and used in food and medical industries, so I feel pretty good about using it. But it'll also warp if you leave it in in your car in the summer in warm climates. They make more uv and temperature resistant plastics, and I imagine I'll casually keep looking into those to see if I can find something I can use but also feel safe about people putting in their mouths.

[Moof]

The plastic I'm using is sustainable, not petroleum based, and used in food and medical industries ... But it'll also warp if you leave it in your car in the summer in warm climates.

That probably wouldn't do a flute or a fiddle much good either! People will expect adequate tensile strength in a whistle, but they can get used to instruments that need a bit of care. I might be in a small minority who'd think that was perfectly fine now (I'm even willing to shift my electricity consumption to when demand can be met from renewable sources), but environment-first attitudes are becoming more widespread.

[Wanderer]

That probably wouldn't do a flute or a fiddle much good either! People will expect adequate tensile strength in a whistle, but they can get used to instruments that need a bit of care. I might be in a small minority who'd think that was perfectly fine now (I'm even willing to shift my electricity consumption to when demand can be met from renewable sources), but environment-first attitudes are becoming more widespread.

And my thinking kind of mirrors the cultural zeitgeist: environmentally friendly/sustainable is better than a material that isn't. But with the kinds of big things happening in 3d printing these days, it pays to keep your eye on the changes. If they could improve the properties of PLA without worsening the environmental impact, it'd be worth experimenting with for instruments.

More printers and filament makers are using PETG these days because it's stronger, food safe, and has better thermal resistance. But it's also a petroleum product, so I'm not as interested. ABS was one of the first widely available plastics for 3d printing, with decent physical properties, but is non-compostable, potentially gives off toxic styrene fumes when melting, and is a petroleum product. But they're introducing new materials all the time, so I'm keeping my eyes out.

Right now, though, it seems the hot fad is flexible/rubbery plastics like TPU. Stuff you can make watch bands out of, or semi-rigid tires for RC cars. PLA seems to hit a really sweet spot of positive characteristics for most folks, and those that need a slightly stronger PLA go to PETG--so there doesn't seem to be as much experimentation around providing a "better PLA"

[Solas691]

Hi any updates on the 3d whistles ??

[Wanderer]

Hi any updates on the 3d whistles ??

Well, I've made some more.
I sold one today at the local pop-up market I vend 3d-printed stuff at.
No new production improvements or developments, as I spent most of the week making non-whistle inventory for the aforementioned market.

[Wanderer]

I forgot to turn on timelapse video so you guys can watch a half-dozen of these 'grow' in my printer. So instead, you get the static image.

[David Cooper]

I hadn't imagined you doing more than one at once, but now it's obvious that that's the way to do it.

I've been thinking about using a 3D printer to make models for components which I'll then use to make moulds so that I can produce the actual components for instruments in resin - I want them to be invisible once embedded in the resin of the instrument walls. I don't know if it's worth buying a 3D printer just to do that, but I could maybe get someone else to print them for me. I need these components to hold magnets in the right place in moulds before adding resin (while the magnets will hold flute tube sections together and also hold whistle mouthpieces onto quenas). I was looking at 3D printing software and it all seems to be 64-bit, while I don't have a 64-bit computer (other than my phone). Is there any 32-bit CAD software that can produce the right kind of files for 3D printing which you can recommend? I'm not asking you to do any research into that for me, but I'm just asking in case you already happen to know of something suitable. Personal recommendations are usually best for this kind of thing as there's so much learning involved in using such software and I can't afford to spend time wrestling with the wrong things.

[Wanderer]

I hadn't imagined you doing more than one at once, but now it's obvious that that's the way to do it.

I've been thinking about using a 3D printer to make models for components which I'll then use to make moulds so that I can produce the actual components for instruments in resin - I want them to be invisible once embedded in the resin of the instrument walls. I don't know if it's worth buying a 3D printer just to do that, but I could maybe get someone else to print them for me. I need these components to hold magnets in the right place in moulds before adding resin (while the magnets will hold flute tube sections together and also hold whistle mouthpieces onto quenas). I was looking at 3D printing software and it all seems to be 64-bit, while I don't have a 64-bit computer (other than my phone). Is there any 32-bit CAD software that can produce the right kind of files for 3D printing which you can recommend? I'm not asking you to do any research into that for me, but I'm just asking in case you already happen to know of something suitable. Personal recommendations are usually best for this kind of thing as there's so much learning involved in using such software and I can't afford to spend time wrestling with the wrong things.

With my printer, I have a build volume of 256^3mm. I could conceivably do maybe 15 at one go. I could theoretically fit more, but some space is taken up with support materials and such so I can't pack them as tightly. I usually do 3--this is the first time I've done 6. I'm only low-key selling them, so I'm only getting the occasional order, and I haven't been wanting to commit to making a bunch in any one particular color. That said, I do have them listed on Etsy with the black-and-silver colors scheme. Since I've started selling a few there, I wanted to ensure I had a few on hand so I wouldn't have to scramble to print them on demand when orders come in.

I'm not sure if there's any 32 bit software out there. Much of the personal computing world started moving toward 64 bit in 2003, and the software I use, Fusion 360, doesn't have a 32-bit equivalent.

[David Cooper]

I'm only low-key selling them, so I'm only getting the occasional order, and I haven't been wanting to commit to making a bunch in any one particular color. That said, I do have them listed on Etsy with the black-and-silver colors scheme. Since I've started selling a few there, I wanted to ensure I had a few on hand so I wouldn't have to scramble to print them on demand when orders come in.

I had a look through eight pages of results and couldn't see anything that looked like them. What's your brand name? It looks tough just to get visibility for people to know your whistles exist, but you have better potential for customisation than other makers and for a wide range of products that other methods of production can't match, so you should be able to develop a robust business just by being ahead of the curve and establishing your name. You're also using materials that the buyer could drill their own holes in and replace the main tube repeatedly until they've got the instrument exactly the way they want it, so there's an advantage there too that you have over other makers, added to which, people could also order whistles designed specifically for them by telling your software where they want the holes to be. You could mop up a substantial chunk of the market for customers who have specific requirements due to disabilities.

I'm not sure if there's any 32 bit software out there. Much of the personal computing world started moving toward 64 bit in 2003, and the software I use, Fusion 360, doesn't have a 32-bit equivalent.

I'll be forced to get a 64-bit machine when Windows 10 becomes extinct, so I'll just have to wait till then. For now I can make less precise component models using a Dremel, and they may turn out to be good enough.

[Wanderer]

I had a look through eight pages of results and couldn't see anything that looked like them. What's your brand name?

https://whistlerscreations.etsy.com

It looks tough just to get visibility for people to know your whistles exist, but you have better potential for customisation than other makers and for a wide range of products that other methods of production can't match, so you should be able to develop a robust business just by being ahead of the curve and establishing your name. You're also using materials that the buyer could drill their own holes in and replace the main tube repeatedly until they've got the instrument exactly the way they want it, so there's an advantage there too that you have over other makers, added to which, people could also order whistles designed specifically for them by telling your software where they want the holes to be. You could mop up a substantial chunk of the market for customers who have specific requirements due to disabilities.

I agree with all of the above, but am in no rush. So far, everyone that's gotten a whistle has had good things to say, but that's a relatively small number. I'm not really trying to be 'seen' yet until I'm sure that everything is a quality I can stand by without a lot of variation and a production method that's repeatable. My biggest problem when I was making wooden whistles is that my fine motor skills just weren't yet up to snuff for that kind of work, and so it was difficult for me to make mouthpieces that had the same playing characteristics from one to another. I feel considerably better about what I'm producing now, but I've been on C&F for a looooong time. I know how fast a maker can get a bad reputation for quality and that'll kill any long-term aspirations I may have for doing this kind of thing.

So, I'm taking it slow and getting some organic orders in standard black-and-silver colors before I go all crazy and build a website and/or blow up my etsy shop with all the wild options i've been playing with here at the house.

I'll be forced to get a 64-bit machine when Windows 10 becomes extinct, so I'll just have to wait till then. For now I can make less precise component models using a Dremel, and they may turn out to be good enough.

[Wanderer]

one of those 6 whistles I just printed...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1pW0CdmVqs

[Wanderer]

I finally remembered to grab a timelapse video and pull it off the printer between print jobs.

https://youtu.be/eF24IcRMVDc