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.
Highlights
Nowadays, AM is used to produce prototypes, mostly for validation tests instead of taking advantage of its incredible design freedom capability [1]
Pareto graph shows that the material factor is more important and relevant to the sound quality compared to the cup geometry dimensions (Fig. 9) (Pareto graph detailed treatment can be found in [38])
From the cube plot, the best combination seems to be a mouthpiece made with SLA technology with big cup dimensions, while the worst combination is the selection of Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) technique and small cup volume
Summary
AM is used to produce prototypes, mostly for validation tests instead of taking advantage of its incredible design freedom capability [1]. AM is becoming to be used in the musical field for final product generation due to two main reasons: (1) reconstruction and replication of ancient musical instruments for conservation reasons [2]; (2) design with optimization of new musical instruments for innovative shape research to produce the desired sounds [3]. The research of innovative shapes useful to obtain unexplored acoustic capabilities is described in [3] with a discussion of the AM techniques which can be used. AM gives the possibility to customize the musical instrument according to the musician’s needs, producing innovative shapes that are optimized iteratively, thanks to musician feedbacks together with sound analysis in a fast design-to-manufacturing cycle by the Digital Manufacturing concept employment [6]. As an example, [7] describes the design of an end-user-oriented component that
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
