Additive manufacturing is attractive both for research tool and personal low-volume production and prototyping. Some players of reed instruments (clarinet, saxophone, oboe etc) are keen to investigate the potential of 3D printing for producing well-performing reeds that can match a players preferences and which can be consistently produced without the variability inherent in reeds from cane.
The first stage of the project will be to take some traditional cane reeds and research how their performance is determined by their geometry and structural properties. Then to reproduce these properties using multiple material 3D printers and test how well they perform. This project should be attractive to students who are players of a reed instrument.
Undergraduate
A description of the mechanical properties of traditional cane reeds and what tolerances players accept. Statistics of the variability of cane reeds. Investigation of the potential of additive manufacturing to replicate the performance of cane reeds. Subjective testing of 3D printed samples with players.
None
No lab has been assigned to this project