3D printing

[Greg Jowaisas]

Concertina making is incredibly labor intensive.

 

If there are ways to reduce labor (sometimes repetitive, boring labor) , reduce cost and increase precision without compromising sound then I am all for it.

 

A good example already cited is the laser cutting of fretwork. I bet the Lachenal workers in the spindle sander department and the Wheatstone people on the scroll saw would have jumped at a chance to use a programable laser.

 

The possibility of using lighter and stronger than wood materials where a machine cuts out a contiguous action pan that matches a solid, stable reed pan cut from a single or two blocks of material is quite intriguing.

 

Innovation! Bring it on!

 

Greg (In the trenches helping make Carroll Concertinas)

Edited November 29, 2010 by Greg Jowaisas

[Steve_freereeder]

A neighbour recently handed me a part about the size of a small fist, a very complex shape, and asked how I thought he made it. Machining it would have been possible but very time consuming. Turns out he printed it. (Just writing the word "printed" to mean this process is disturbing. Something inside me shouts "this is not right". Please someone invent a word for the process.)

I agree that '3D printing' is an uncomfortable term for this process. How about '3D replicating'? And the machine which does the job could be called a 'replicator'.

 

As for whether the process could be used in building concertinas, I'm not sure. The construction and design of the reed pans and chambers are obvious starting points for consideration. But I don't know enough about the process - accuracy tolerances, stability, durability, longevity of finished product, etc. - to be able to comment further. But my gut feeling is that this is not really appropriate for concertinas as we currently know them. With a radical redesign of the instrument, 3D replication might have a place in construction, but would the end result be an improvement? I don't know.

 

 

 

[Robin Madge]

I think we are missing the other piece of technology that is needed to go hand in hand with the 3D printer for use as discussed in this thread. As most of us are looking at a way to make a copy of an item we also need a 3D scanner to digitise the details of the shape that is to be copied!

 

Robin Madge

[JimLucas]

This is all getting a little serious.

Can we pull the thread back to the original theme?

I was anticipating some discourse with wild & whacky ideas on how 3D printing technology could be applied to the concertina.

Thinking caps on then.....

I'll start with some "retrograde" possibilities.

• Printing "paperless" music with pages that can actually be turned?
  
• Or using the technology to convert written (abc or other notation) music into punched-paper rolls (I've seen "player" concertinas, like player pianos), Edison cylinders, or LP's?

Then something a little more radical.

• How about building 3-D fretwork, with specifically shaped and patterned internal open cells or even winding tunnels, to see what effect they might have on volume and tone?

[Robin Madge]

And another thing to consider about a 3D scanner would be what size is the original if you are scaling it down.

 

"Well, how about some OO gauge figures of Morris dancers, including, amongst the musicians, at least one concertina player, standing on the upward platform, waiting for a train to take them to their next place of display?"

 

On the subject of scaling things, if you did manage to make a reed shoe this way you could then scale it up and down for different size reeds.

 

As regards Morris dancers on a Model Railway you have to do some serious research depending on the date and district that you are portraying.

If I model the West country in the summer about 1947 I'm only likely to find dancers at a local event such as a fete.

If I model Lancashire in during the holiday wakes week period (different weeks for different towns) in 1911 then I'm more likley to find teams heading off to Blackpool for the day at the weekend to make some beer money by dancing for the holiday makers, and yes I've seen a photo of Royton with a concertina player at this period.

 

Robin Madge

[JimLucas]

I think we are missing the other piece of technology that is needed to go hand in hand with the 3D printer for use as discussed in this thread. As most of us are looking at a way to make a copy of an item we also need a 3D scanner to digitise the details of the shape that is to be copied!

While that is one potential use, I don't think that just making copies is quite what Steve S had in mind. After all, ordinary printing existed quite usefully for hundreds of years before the first electronic scanner and copier.

 

And in order for a 3-D "scanner" to completely and unambiguously "scan" completely enclosed interior spaces, it would almost certainly have to either destroy the object being "scanned" or be able to look through a fourth dimension. (Radiation tomography won't be adequate if there are wide variations in density and thickness.)

[JimLucas]

Well, how about some OO gauge figures of Morris dancers, including, amongst the musicians, at least one concertina player, standing on the upward platform, waiting for a train to take them to their next place of display?

As regards Morris dancers on a Model Railway you have to do some serious research depending on the date and district that you are portraying.

Unless, of course, historical accuracy isn't a primary goal.

 

How about a bit of "alternate history", in which automobiles never became ascendant and Morris dancing with concertinas gained the same popularity as football has today?

[SteveS]

Where the 3D printer is useful is in prototyping. Prototype ends could be designed on CAD packages, modelled in software and then printed out. After being furnished with fittings, they could be tested. Ends may accept a suitable finish (eg. ebonising) for production instruments.

 

Reed pans of different formats/dimensions could also be prototyped. In fact the whole instrument could be prototyped - it doesnt need to function as a production instrument, but prototyping is an essential part of productizing a new design. The dimensions, look/feel can all be worked out prior to commiting time (loads of time required in making concertinas) to the creation of an instrument.

 

The whole instrument design could be made on a CAD package, and I believe that a number of modern makers are already using CAD for component manufacture for production instruments. The ability to interface with CAD may greatly ease the production of some parts - like as I mentioned previously, lever arms, buttons, fretted ends, bellows frames, etc.

[Anglo-Irishman]

A neighbour recently handed me a part about the size of a small fist, a very complex shape, and asked how I thought he made it. Machining it would have been possible but very time consuming. Turns out he printed it. (Just writing the word "printed" to mean this process is disturbing. Something inside me shouts "this is not right". Please someone invent a word for the process.)

 

Chris,

The word has been invented, and it's used in the news item linked to from the original posting. It's "rapid prototyping."

 

This is a technique used in casting machine parts in metal. To produce castings, you need a positive pattern of the part in question, which is used to make the negative moulds for the actual casting process. The negative mould is destoyed each time a casting is made, so the positive pattern has to be durable enough to be used for many negative moulds. This, however, means that it has to be carefully machined in durable material, which is costly and time-consuming, and viable only for series production.

 

For a one-off prototype casting, which may prove useless, the positive pattern doesn't have to be so durable, so it can be made of a cheaper, less durable material. Instead of milling the part from a solid block of whatever, "rapid prototyping" builds up the pattern from layers of plastic of well-defined thickness, using the drawings of the part stored in a computer format. The layers are cut to the contours and laminated together. The result is a pretty accurate positive pattern of the part as designed, that will survive at least the production of a prototype casting.

 

I don't know why the Gentlemen of the Press call this "printing". Printing the layers of the part would be pointless - you'd take so much time to cut the layers out and glue them together that you might as well mill the model in a durable material from the start. No, the layers are machine-cut and machine-laminated.

And what emerges is not a usable part, but a pattern to make a mould for a usable casting.

 

You might just be able to use a "rapid prototyping" model as the action-box of a concertina - but it's probably easier to glue those few straight bits of wood together!

 

I can think of ways of misappropriating this technique for things that don't have to be durable - I particularly like the idea of model railway landscaping. You could even take a 3D scan of your favourite real landscape (I'm sure Google has one!) and use it as a basis for your "rapid-prototyped" railway layout.

The only 3-D accessories I can imagine getting off my printer are buildings. Many years ago I made a lovely cut-out modelling sheet for a Z-gauge loco shed in MS Publisher. Nowadays, with digital photography and image processing, I could make even more realistic buildings - but, sadly, my eyes just won't focus on things in 1:220 scale these days!

 

Cheers,

John

[michael sam wild]

Wait til we have a digital blueprint that activates the building up of a functioning Jeffries replica...

I wonder how long that wait will be.

 

...and a competent player to go with it!

Do you write

fantasy

in your spare time?

 

Well Jim , as a Biology Teacher in 1962 , after reading Scientific American I told my pupils that one day they might extract DNA from the blood of dinosaurs in the body of mosquitoes trapped in fossilised resin or amber and then clone them.

 

I wish i'd patented the concept , or better still wrtten the book!.