Concert Ukulele

thingiverse

Fully playable concert sized ukulele. When my wife is out of the room, she cannot tell if I am playing my 3D printed ukulele or my commercial wooden ukulele. Here is a sample for how the ukulele sounds: https://youtu.be/aQ5t-8TQPMs (I am still a beginner) Go to: https://kms104.gitbook.io/3d-printing-ukuleles/ for a more detailed description of the ukuleles, printer settings, and files. You can here examples of these ukuleles being played at: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXbvWuus8wwvp80Zf3ysKaLMbjueqepfr Generally I use: *.4 mm nozzle *0.30 mm "DRAFT" layer height *Different amounts of infill depending on the piece *Circular disks at the sharp corners of the large pieces to prevent warping on multi-hour prints *Magnets on the circular disks after the print layer exceeds 3mm to help hold print down and reduce warping on long prints *Super glue to glue pieces together *Texture print sheet Assembling Ukulele Notes: Neck and Fretboard *Use carbon fiber bars to strength the neck - see gitbook for details *Spaces/voids in the ends of the neck were to fill with epoxy for extra strength - it works but I no longer think this is necessary *Fretboard is glued to the neck and then the neck is slid into the body and secured with a M5 bolt *Nut can be swapped out to tune the instruments action and feel Body *Print with extra perimeters to make sure the body does not have voids and is as still as possible *Use super glue to assembly the upper and lower body parts *Print the lower part of the body with the string mounts from the Saddle/Bridge/Break - but not the Saddle itself *Print the Saddle separately and bolt to the body - you can experiment to see how the height impacts the action, sound, and buzzing *I printed one saddle that uses a vertically mounted piece of the carbon fiber stiffening bars from the neck - I cannot tell much difference Note: I am interesting in collaborating on how to analyze the body for resonance frequency to try and tune a brighter sound.