Fully 3D Printed Harp/Zither by MintyFries

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

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DISCLAIMERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
-DO NOT expect this to sound good
-This is a proof of concept, not a working instrument
-The strings will break with any rough playing
-I only have a printer with a 5 inch print bed, so I designed it with that in mind. Ideally, it should be re-designed and printed with a larger printer
-The holes are for pins in case you wanted to attach real strings (metal, nylon, gut, etc, not PLA) to the soundboard
-I only know that this works with PLA. I can't speak for ABS or other materials
-This is a WORK IN PROGRESS. I can already think of innumerable improvements to the design (like thinner walls), so hang tight for improvements
This is a 100% 3D printed harp instrument. The main body prints in one piece, strings and all. Then you just have to glue on a soundboard and glue together a crimping mechanism that keeps the strings taut. The crimping mechanism attaches to the body just by pressure, but you need to glue together the two gears and tuning bar. Once that's together, pop on the crimping mechanism and then start strumming (but please strum softly so the strings last longer).
I like to build musical instruments, and thus often find myself testing out the musical properties of various materials. One day I was changing a spool of filament, and my printer started eeking out a ton of thin, stringy PLA. Naturally, I tried stretching some of it across a soundbox (read, a cardboard box). Lo and behold, it actually worked! It could be plucked and made a sound just like any other cheap string material. The string didn't last very long before breaking, but it worked for a brief time.
So I got to work designing and printing small prototype harps and finding out the right dimensions for my printer to print suspended strings across a gap. Since I wanted the strings to print onto the soundbox in one print (without requiring glue), I decided to tune the harp using a crimping mechanism instead of standard tuning pins.
Don't ask me what the tuning for this is because it would be futile to attempt to work out a tuning. The PLA just wouldn't take to being tuned like a more suitable material (like high carbon steel) would. And the stings are so small that the pitch is unpleasantly high and tinny, so tuning doesn't much matter anyway. The crimping mechanism only serves to get the strings taut, not to get them tuned. I wonder if it's possible to print suspended strings and then print a few more layers over them to make the strings thicker, but I doubt it, and I haven't tested it yet.
This is really just a fun proof of concept project, or something to use for decoration, so please don't expect a nice instrument from this print. It would be a far better idea to print a base and then attach real strings to it, rather than using plastic. I just wanted to show that a working harp could be 100% printed from PLA, strings and all.
Please, please, please feel free to take this concept and run with it. I'd love to see what others can make using PLA strings.