An Investigation in Tone Characteristics of 3D Printed Ukulele Sound Chambers
Joshua Riefer, Bruce L. Tai, Jyhwen E. Wang · Manufacturing Letters · 2022
Musical instruments, and in turn their respective sounds, have changed and developed over time with advents and advances in various manufacturing methods and technologies. In order to effectively interpret the causes of different experimental sound nuances, it becomes important to investigate them metrically in light of precedent sounds. As 3D printing technology emerges into the arena of musical instrument development, so does the need for a thorough understanding of present tools and empirical acoustic groundwork for future endeavors. For the scope of this research, three different filament types (ABS, PLA, and HIPS) were used to print soprano ukulele style resonating chambers using a TAZ 6 fused filament fabrication machine. Normalized sound samples were compared to Makanu soprano ukulele baseline using three tone metrics, drawing from MATLAB Fast Fourier transform and spectrogram functionality. The selected metrics of fullness, sustain and strength demonstrated definitive, early progress toward better understanding sound characteristics of 3D printed string instruments.