Nanxiao Chinese Bamboo Flute

thingiverse

This is a precise copy of my Chinese end-blown Nanxiao or Dongxiao bamboo flute. It could be considered as the Chinese version of the shakuhachi. You may find the fingering chart here: http://www.goamcan.com/imports/How-to-play-xiao.html, chose the 8 hole version which matches this flute. I supply an stl file of the entire flute in one piece, one file in which the flute is cut in 7 pieces, as well as the 7 pieces as individual files. I put a joint between the mouth piece and the second piece. It may require some polishing. The other pieces can be glued together by epoxy. Furthermore, I supply 3 alternative mouthpieces: nanxiao_shaku is a shakuchachi mouthpiece. It makes the sound more haunting and louder with more overtones, while the original mouthpiece gives a more quite, very full and beautiful sound. Nanxiao_travers is a western style traverse flute mouthpiece, which produces a sound somehow in between the other two mouthpieces. nanxiao_xiao is modeled after a chinese xiao flute, a flute very similar to the nanxiao, but typically longer and it is closed on the upper side with only a small blow hole on the edge. The latter one is in my opinion most easy to play and very expressive. Post-Printing The mouthpiece needs some polishing. The blowing edge is the outer triangular edge of the notch. Eventually, it needs some sharpening with polishing paper or a sharp knife. I usually also cut away some material on the inner edges of the notch to make more oscillating air enter the flute body and this helps a lot to produce a louder sound. A problem I found with all 3D printed flutes I made so far is that it is somewhat difficult to blow the lowest one or two notes. For these the air in the body has to move over a large distance and the roughness of the inner wall causes too much friction for these notes to sound properly. To avoid this it is essential to polish the inner wall by wrapping some polishing paper around a stick until the notes start ringing properly. I have printed different flutes with different base tones by scaling the size up or down from the bass to soprano range and all of them sound great. I achieved the best sound results with PLA filament filled with either glass particles or organic materials such as coffee or wood. The printed versions have their own character, but they do sound in their own sense as good as my wooden original.