Description
When I was deciding what to do as my final project, I was always circling back to my kids and family. I wanted to make something that they could use, play with or something they would enjoy. At first I was thinking designing a chess set using excel spreadsheet and figure out an algorithm or a formula to design the correct shapes, but then I thought that none of my kids know how to play chess. Then I thought what kids love the most? Noise and destruction! 😆 And all my kiddos really enjoy art and music.
It also happens to be that I came across this contest on Instructables to be entered into $500 Amazon gift card for designing and building projects that makes noise. Designer are encouraged to demonstrate their skills in creating unique and fascinating noise-making devices.
To clarify, Instructables is a website/platform where you can share what you make through words, photos, video and files. I thought it would be a great inspiration to push myself to do this project and conveniently, the deadline for this project is on December 12th.
I would like to design some type of musical instrument or a device that does not sound terrible, but could make a melody. I don’t think I have the skill to be designing anything insanely complex, such as 3D printed guitar, but it would be interesting to even research how instruments work and how I can design them using our software and then 3D print it. I am thinking in line of perhaps a music box where I could use our latest lesson of random little pivots on a shape and make perhaps song that will sound cute and fun (or perhaps sad and dreamy). Maybe I’ll make a few!
Timeline
A timeline that describes how you will accomplish your plan including the identification of milestones with dates.
- November 2nd: Start working on project and figure out the direction (shape/style)
- November 9th: Have all research finished (what parts are needed, how does sound work, etc.)
- November 16th: Figure out the code and have a couple of test prints done
- November 23rd: Thanksgiving Break/ Have at least a part of the final design done
- November 30th: Have most of the design finished
- December 7th: Finished project delivered
Related Work
When researching my potential project I came across many incredible sound-making devices. One of the most fascinating projects was found here on CMD.LINK and 3d printed guitars project
Another interesting project was MIT Media Lab’s 3D Printed Flute: Digital Fabrication and Design of Musical Instruments
There seems to be an exciting development for 3D printed instruments. This was a very interesting post written by Prusa Research and quite inspiring. It is mostly focused on wind instruments, such as recorders, kazoo and ocarina.
Hi Michaela! I think this is a really cool concept and I love the idea of experimenting with how you can produce sound. I love that you showed a music box because when we saw the gcode examples last week with the bumps, it also reminded me of the internal piece of music boxed that rotates and triggers the notes, and considered that you could make that well with either the clay printer or getting it metal printed (but metal would probably be expensive)! So I’m really excited that you are considering doing that for your project or something along those lines. Maybe you could even make a little figure or something that spins around on top like some music boxes have!
Hi Lauren, thank you for your ideas! You gave me a great inspiration. I was thinking about doing a little box with a figurine, but I wasn’t sure if I’ll have enough time to do that. Maybe if I just projected an image instead of building it from scratch.
Oh also if you want some more inspiration for people who invent new instruments and ways to make sounds, check out the Guthman Musical Instrument Competition. It’s not necessarily focused on using computational fabrication techniques, but I’m sure you could still get lots of inspiration of how to go about ways of creating sound!
Oh, thank you!!! I will definitely check them out! I haven’t heard about that one.
Hey Michaela,
I really love the ideas that you’ve included here, and I think that your final product is going to turn out awesome! I actually also considered something this this effect since I’m a huge Legend of Zelda fan which includes the Ocarina. I think there’s room to investigate the clay printer here to see what kind of results you may be able to get. It might not be a perfect science but playing around with making various holes in a ceramic (or other material) shape should start making sounds easier than you’d think!
Hey Christopher, that is a great idea! I think I will try to do that! Ceramic seems like such a neat material to work with.
I ordered some metalic (with metal powder) pla, but I don’t know if it’ll make the sound any better than regular pla.