3D-Printed Mouthpieces

[IrresponsibleRobot]

I thought I'd have a go at making my own mouthpiece, and the result so far... could use refinement. My first attempt has given me something that works, but has a very airy tone. To my mind, this may well be caused by some combination of surface finish (I only sanded the rim for comfort, but the rest is still raw) or overall mass. I'll apply some elbow grease to get the whole cup interior as smooth as I can, and maybe a revised design with more material a la megatone. I'm using wood PLA, because it makes my house smell nice while the printer is running.



Has anybody here played around with homebrew mouthpieces much? Any thoughts or suggestions?

[elmsandr]

Harrison had a thread with experience 3D printing during the design stage of a custom mouthpiece from an online maker. IIRC, the result was ‘directionally correct’ for figuring out some details, but get it made in metal.

Cheers,
Andy

[timothy42b]

You could maybe do a lost wax style casting in 3D, but there would need to be surface finishing there too.

We had someone on the forum build a trombone with 3D, you might find it in the archives.

[hyperbolica]

Plastic mouthpieces do work in general, but the best ones are made from denser, harder materials. I use DE lexan rims for all my trombones, and often a Kelly plastic for tuba. Metal does give more tone per user input than plastic, though.

For 3d print the surface finish on the inside/throat/back bore will be important as well as on the outer shank to get the seal/connection to the receiver to work. Use the densest material you can process.

[finnian4258]

There is free software that you can download called Venn-CAD. It is made by Vennture Mouthpieces. You can design your own mouthpiece and have them make you one or download a file and 3-D print it. I have made so many mouthpieces in it for all my instruments and have had 0 issues with it. Just make sure that when you download the file and print it you have 100% infill and print it with the rim down, no support.

[IrresponsibleRobot]

There is free software that you can download called Venn-CAD. It is made by Vennture Mouthpieces. You can design your own mouthpiece and have them make you one or download a file and 3-D print it. I have made so many mouthpieces in it for all my instruments and have had 0 issues with it. Just make sure that when you download the file and print it you have 100% infill and print it with the rim down, no support.

Interesting...

[IrresponsibleRobot]

Okay, here's my experience with VennCAD so far, in case anybody's interested.

Creating a clone of a pre-existing mouthpiece works great. They sound good, to the point that I think I like the Schilke 59 I printed better than the Faxx 1.5 I've been using (disclaimer, this is on a plastic horn, so I may be dealing with a different ceiling than somebody with a proper instrument). Using VennCAD as a reference I've also been able to indirectly solve the tone issues with my from-scratch mouthpiece from before, which ended up being down to the shape of the throat.

The problem for me comes with doing anything custom. Anything more advanced than putting a pre-existing cup on a pre-existing backbore and futzing with the shank size results in the program locking up. This is likely fixable somehow, but for now I can't speak to the results of doing anything truly custom.

[harrisonreed]

It works. Make sure you read the manual and you are using backbores that are "legal".