Irish Flute

Bringing Irish flute to many

A good quality wood Irish flute is expensive, and that’s normal

However it prevents many people to discover that wonderful instrument.

I encountered many people that are curious about flute in general and Irish flute in particular but couldn’t try it because how much an instrument cost. It’s not easy to spend almost 200$ on something you don’t know how to play!

Then there were those who wanted so badly to try it that they brought a cheap wooden tube on E-bay that looked like real flute but were only décor instruments. They tried it, couldn’t make a decent sound and abandoned, thinking Irish flute wasn’t for them.

 

So I decided to design an irish flute in D for everyone !

 

It's key features are :

• Multiple geometry tapered bore, for a better sound
• Thick walls for durability and agreable heft
• Angled holes for confortable play
• Threaded tenon for leak proof jointure while keeping it dissamblable
• Tuning Slide, working with the principle of a threaded tenon
• A pretty desing

 

This model is still a work in progress Playability and tuning still need to be improved. It is linked to a indiegogo project that can be found here : https://igg.me/at/IMFlutes/x#/. 

 

EDIT : 

As it turn out, when not played by a noob like myself the tuning is pretty good (less than +/-10 cent form perfect with the A being a perfect 440hz). therefore all my future effort will be directed on making a keyed version of it!

Instruction regarding printing :

I have provided print profiles (multi colour and signle colour) that will I think gives the best results. If you do not want to use them keep the followings in mind :

• Wall count and infill : 

  The wall count and infill in my profiles are high, but that has a reason, not only the tube need to be airthight, but it must have a big rigidity. The inner wall of the tube must not vibrate or you will suffer lower volume and harmonics. Remember, even if you don't feel the tube vibrate it can still be vibrating : As harmonics are low energy they have low wave amplitude that you may not feel with your finger. Plus as the tube has an inner wall and an outer wall, the inner wall can vibrate while the outer wall dont ! with PLA you may be able to lower the infill to 30% and still be good, but it has not been tested

• Layed height :

  I have choosen a layer hight of 0.16 as it is what gioves the best sound in my opinon. A higher layer hight will add harmonics while lowering the main frequency, a lower layer hight will do the opposite. You can also coat or smooth the inner wall and have a brighter sound, but you will loose a bit of its richness as you will decrease harmonics.

• Material

  plain old PLA is the best for woodwind due to its density. I know ABS will work but in this case do not lower infill. PETG have not been tested. Wood PLA will not work as it is porous and will leak air.

Boost MeHelp me make it the perfect cheap flute the world deserve !

 

Here is a sound demo, but keep in mind that I am a very inexperienced player and that phone speaker tend to not like that type of sound and saturate (at least my Iphone hate it) :

 

and then when played by someone who knows how to actually play :

 

 

You'll need to wrap thread around the tenon for assembly, here's how to do it :