A design of experiment approach to 3D-printed mouthpieces sound analysis

Abstract

Nowadays additive manufacturing is affected by a rapid expansion of possible applications. It is defined as a set of technologies that allow the production of components from 3D digital models in a short time by adding material layer by layer. It shows enormous potential to support wind musical instruments manufacturing because the design of complex shapes could produce unexplored and unconventional sounds, together with external customization capabilities. The change in the production process, material and shape could affect the resulting sound. This work aims to compare the music performances of 3D-printed trombone mouthpieces using both Fused Deposition Modelling and Stereolithography techniques, compared to the commercial brass one. The quantitative comparison is made applying a Design of Experiment methodology, to detect the main additive manufacturing parameters that affect the sound quality. Digital audio processing techniques, such as spectral analysis, cross-correlation and psychoacoustic analysis in terms of loudness, roughness and fluctuation strength have been applied to evaluate sounds. The methodology herein applied could be used as a standard for future studies on additively manufactured musical instruments.

The problem with printing pitch: challenges in designing 3D printed claves

“…The level of detailed customization offered by 3D printing is well suited to the development of instruments and components with widely variable styles and designs, such as woodwind and brass mouthpieces. 3D printing is made even more appealing by allowing for that customization without incurring additional tooling costs (Bacciaglia et al, 2020(Bacciaglia et al, , 2021Cottrell and Howell, 2019;Lorenzoni et al, 2013). Generally, most research into additively manufactured instruments has focused on wind instruments because they are expensive to manufacture traditionally with many separate moving parts (Cottrell and Howell, 2019;Dabin et al, 2016;Lorenzoni et al, 2013).…”

Micromechanical Models for FDM 3D-Printed Polymers: A Review

“…Due to its large number of advantages compared to traditional subtractive manufacturing techniques [4], such as its cost-efficiency [1,5,6], prototyping speed [1,[7][8][9][10], high flexibility in producing complex geometries [1,[4][5][6][7]9,11,12], reduced material waste [1,5,10], decreased time and labour costs [13], and facilitation of product customization [3,10,12], this process has gained increasing attention [11] and popularity [14]. Therefore, 3D-printing technology applications can be found in a large variety of sectors, not limited to the automotive [9], aerospace engineering [5,9,15], medical application [9], biomedical engineering, civil engineering [15], marine engineering [16], clothes, and music [17] industries. However, the disadvantages are that these processes are subject to problems of accuracy [10,18]; difficulty in performance tailoring [10] (defects, durability, and anisotropy in particular [3,8,10,14,19]); poor surface quality [20,…”

Influence of 3D Printing Direction in PLA Acoustic Guitars on Vibration Response

“…The importance of the creation of thick walls was observed, which provided mechanical resistance to pressure, which is fundamental for the correct functioning of the flute. With regard to air-instrument components, the work of Bacciaglia et al [ 5 ] shows the differences in the use of FDM with SLA, as FDM does not provide the best acoustic response for a trumpet mouthpiece in this case. Instead, the possibilities of such fabrications for the generation of new geometries are shown.…”