hello everyone and welcome to cimquest tv,2 minute tuesdays. in this week’s episode, we’ll show youour unique melodic instrument design, the 3d printed tubulum. our ceo rob hassold strived to develop a fundesign that would illustrate some of the cool capabilities of 3d printing.
cinema 4d for 3d printing, drawing on inspiration from the famous andexceptionally talented blue man group, rob decided to create an iteration of the percussivetube instrument that blue man performs with. known as the tubulum, this instrument is similarto a xylophone or vibraphone in that the musician strikes it with a stick-like appliance toproduce individual melodic notes.
the traditional blue man instrument is builtwith pvc pipes, a type of pipe widely used in plumbing applications. we realized we could achieve this same geometrythrough 3d printing. the design was first drafted in solidworkscad as an assembly. the assembly was then converted into stl filesand sent to our 3d printers. using both our fortus 900 and fortus 400,we printed 145 parts for the assembly. the entire assembly could have been producedall at once on the fortus 900. however, we decided to print in separate piecesso that we could take advantage of the many colors available to print with asa.
the entire instrument including the wheelshave been 3d printed with the exception of the cotter pins. our tubulum can generate a variety of musicalstyles including the popular beverly hills cop theme song “axel f†and the americanjazz standard “take five†by dave brubeck. it has three octaves and the notes followthe same arrangement as a piano keyboard. you can even strike multiple notes at thesame time to produce chords as demonstrated in the beatles classic, “here comes thesunâ€. this instrument was a hit during our tradeshow season earlier this year, providing both entertainment and a glimpse of what our technologyis capable of.
the tubulum is a great example of taking aninnovative concept and converting it into a functional multi-part assembly, all withoutoutsourcing.
companies can apply this same practice duringthe prototyping stages, with the end goal of producing optimal designs with superiorfunctionality and customer appeal. that concludes this episode of 2 minute tuesdays,thank you for joining and we’ll see you next time.
