February 6, 2025
Description
3-Piece Traveler Model with integrated tuning slide now available here: https://makerworld.com/en/models/1148419#profileId-1152196
Boost MeBoosts help keep me in filament to keep working on more models! I have printed hundreds of revisions of these whistles to get them just right! Please consider boosting if you like my work!
Greetings fellow musicians! I'm Greg, an experienced Irish whistler with nearly 30 years of playing under my belt. In addition to my passion for music, I've always been fascinated by technology and innovation.
Drawing from my experience crafting wooden whistles in the early 2000s, I've designed a professional-quality tinwhistle model that can now be produced through 3D printing. These instruments are perfect for serious musicians seeking a high-performance instrument or those looking to upgrade their collection.
Edit: I met up with Joanie Madden of Cherish the Ladies at the North Texas Irish Festival on March 2, 2025. For those who aren't steeped in the whistling world, she's one of the best whistlers on the planet. This is her, playing one of my 3d printed whistles.
I spent over a year honing this model to something I am proud to carry around myself. The print orientation and settings are such that you shouldn't need to do much voicing to get it to play well, and supports are at a minimum.
Warning! You will need to have excellent bed adhesion. I use a nanopolymer adhesive from Vision Miner that can be found here: https://visionminer.com/products/nano-polymer-adhesive
I print on a P1S. No guarantees on how these things will behave on a bed-slinger.
Please note that I've made different print settings that are ideal for the heads and the bodies, so I am including two different print profiles to this model. The bodies profile has a C and a D whistle body. They both are made to fit the same size tuning slide, so the single head profile will work for both. I've also added a third print profile for the jig I use to make the tuning slide consistently. Put the tube in the jig, mark at the line, and then use a pipe cutter to cut the tube at the mark. You'll get a perfect-length bit of tuning slide every time.
The entire whistle is 3d printed except for the tuning slide. This area is quite thin, and doesn't withstand much lateral motion, so I've designed it to fit around a bit of stainless steel or brass tubing that I source form Amazon. The tube has to be 14mm OD with a .5mm thickness. I use pipe cutters to cut these to 33mm lengths and glue them into the whistle.
The head piece and body both have a mortise to fit the tuning slide, but I find that i sometimes have to use a 14mm drill bit to ream them a little, mostly because the seam keeps them from being perfectly round inside. Just ream a little, test the slide, and once it's right, use a bit of super glue to fix it to the mouthpiece.
Please make note of my licensing. These are for personal use. If you want to print whistles for sale, hit me up and we can work out some kind of deal.
Please note, if you have trouble getting a good sound out of the whistle, look up the whistle mouthpiece chimney and make sure that your printer didn't deposit a bit of cruft in there, as sometimes happens.
If that happens, just clean it out with a craft knife, or a thin jeweler's file.
License:
Standard Digital File License
Printcraft
