For my General Music Practices course this semester, we were given the task of building ukuleles for a community outreach program later on during the semester. We call ourselves JMUke and it’s really taken off! One of the masterminds and creators behind this project is Jon Stapleton, a Masters Music Education student, soon to be graduating! He’s an active creator and designer, and was the one who created all the kits that we used to build the ukuleles. Most of the ukulele was wood. However, he 3D printed FRETS! I interviewed Jon about his experience with JMUke and 3D printing, and here’s what he had to say.
Lindsey: Why did you choose to 3D print frets?
Jon: Originally, I was going to fret the instruments traditionally using fret wire. The labor required to do this task for twenty ukuleles was too much, so we had to figure something else out. Given the precision required for optimal fret height, I was uncomfortable trying to laser cut the pieces out of stock material. I settled on 3D printing because it allows for a flexible (shape-wise, not material-wise) and easy-to-replicate design. Overall, 3D printing is not the right process for this kind of production. My time would have been better spent milling an injection-mold. However, I had to adapt fast to this project, and 3D printing was the quickest way to get results I could then replicate.
L: What kind of printer and filament did you use?
We used a TAZ 5 for most of the fret pieces, and a TAZ 6 for a few others. A couple of them are PLA, but most are ABS.
J: What were some hurdles you had to deal with during the process? How did you work around them?
Most of the hurdles were equipment-related. The printers I use get a lot of use, so I had to level the bed pretty much every time I printed something, and had to spend a lot of time making sure that the prints had good adhesion. Over the course of the project, I think every printer I had access to had to undergo some kind of maintenance either to the extruder or the gantry. These repairs slowed down production a great deal. There were bed adhesion issues as well, which I got around by using stick-glue on the bed. This solution has been adopted by most of the other designers in the lab, given that the printers we use are so inconsistent. In the end, it was evident that there were some infill issues with some of the pieces. It’s likely that this was an oversight on my part, or that I compiled the wrong gcode at some point during the process.
Thanks to Jon’s work, we had around 20 ukuleles that we were able to cart around to each event and use to make music with others! Here’s one in action!
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