Research gives glimpse of 3D future

A research team from Autodesk and Dartmouth College has developed a new interactive design tool called Printone, which provides users with the ability to create functional 3-D printed wind instruments in any shape or form using interactive sound simulation feedback. 

The team designed 16 free-form wind instruments to play different melodies, including: a star that can play Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, a bunny that can play Little Peter Rabbit, a snowman that can play Jingle Bells and a dragon that can play Puff the Magic Dragon. 

“With Printone, everybody can be a designer of new wind musical instruments. You can transform almost any shapes you like into instruments and play your favourite melody,” said the study’s co-author, Nobuyuki Umetani, head of the Design and Fabrication group at Autodesk.

Through Printone, users can make a wind instrument out of any shape and are able to select the target notes that they want the instrument to have. After the user inputs a three-dimensional shape into the platform, the tool creates a hollow acoustic cavity. The user then selects the area where they will blow into the instrument easily (known as “the fipple”) and chooses the position and size of finger holes. The scale of the object can also be changed to hit the target range of notes. During this process, users are guided by quick feedback from the simulation on how each edit shifts the notes produced. Alternatively, users can utilise Printone’s AutoTune feature, which produces hole sizes automatically for the target notes desired for the instrument.

“3-D printing has opened up possibilities for personal customisation in manufacturing. Our research shows how it’s possible to customise shapes not just for their appearance, but also for physical behaviour like acoustics. We’re also excited about the creative opportunities to design an instrument for a specific piece of music. Future work could expand into ergonomics so that the instrument’s finger configurations are easier to play for a particular melody,” added study co-author, Emily Whiting, assistant professor of computer science at Dartmouth College, who is also a flutist of over 20 years.