Lindstruments Materials and Processes

Lindstruments has become known in the piping and traditional music communities for using 3D printing to make new, otherwise unavailable instruments – in particular the Lindsay System chanter for Scottish smallpipes and the Qwistle series.

The choice to use 3D printing was straightforward. The Lindsay System Chanter – Lindstruments’ core project and raison d’être – is an entirely new design of Scottish smallpipes chanter. It was developed using 3D printing, and even in its finished, working form it represents a substantial research and development burden for any pipe maker wishing to render it in wood. In 2015 the decision was taken to release the chanter as a 3D-printed instrument, so that players could begin using it and a community could form around the design.

The Low D Qwistle then became a way to explore 3D printing’s ability to produce internal shapes that would be difficult or impossible to make by other methods. The interior of the Low D Qwistle head has a sophisticated internal geometry that has a decisive effect on tone and response.

Experience with these methods has shown that, in certain materials, 3D-printed instruments can achieve a sound quality equivalent to wood. By making the chanter available via 3D printing, players can use and develop the design now, and in doing so help prepare the ground for any future experiments in wooden versions by traditional makers.

Many players of Scottish bellows pipes expect plastics to sound inferior to wood. With some 3D-printed materials this expectation is misplaced. An article on “3D-printed replicas of historical woodwinds” by mechanical engineer Federico Xiccato, materials scientist Gabriele Ricchiardi and musician/teacher Manuel Staropoli, published in the Galpin Society Newsletter (May 2018), describes the use of nylon laser sintering to produce recorder copies with good acoustic results. The authors note that sintered nylon has a density comparable to boxwood and a slight porosity that allows it to be finished much like wood. This is the same family of material we use for the Lindsay System and Qwistle instruments, first adopted here in 2013, and its wood-like acoustic properties were immediately apparent.

As that article also notes, these materials can be finished similarly to wood. Our raw prints are snow-white throughout. We use a colouring process that infuses colour into the surface to a depth of around 0.2 mm; in practice this has proved deep enough to withstand day-to-day wear and abrasion, with the white substrate only exposed if a part is cut or drilled.

3D-printed objects are built by different methods. In our work we mainly use Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM/FFF) and Selective Laser Sintering (SLS). Both processes produce a material that, while solid and strong, has a kind of “grain” and porosity comparable to hardwood. Fine hand finishing and voicing are still required: the tolerances needed in woodwind making are so exacting that even very accurate industrial printers leave small variations between parts.

The fine-tuning stage is therefore similar to that on a traditional set of pipes, using small hand tools to adjust and voice the instrument. In practice this means there is still a clear touch of the maker’s hand on every Lindstruments piece, even where the main body has been printed rather than carved.