Wheel Band spiral for mounting on hurdy gurdies

Wheel band rounded for your Hurdy Gurdy to play without cotton.
(flexible filament/ TPU tested but flexible PLA may work)

When you only have a 10 cm x 10 cm print surface you cannot print a full closed wheel out of tpu.
It is also the only solution when you cannot unmount your wheel. do not forget to remove the strings before (or to get them far from the wheel to avoid any damage during mounting).
It adds circa 1 mm to the radius of the wheel. if you do not have any play room at the wheel hole then you will need to remove some wood from the wheel by sanding the wheel edge with sand paper / files and so on under fast rotation of the wheel... To be done properly you need to watch some tutorials that are also available for the Nerdy Gurdy of Jaap Brandt.

So the trick is to print a flexible spiral band and then glue it with wood glue to the wheel of your hurdy gurdy with a diagonal cut like you would do for a wood veneer (birch/ mahagoni or others).
Close the "circle" make the spiral all around the wheel (one single turn).
For closing it you need to cut again on the diagonal along the other one.
The nice thing in case of TPU. You can stretch it to quasi join side to side the already glued side. use power tape to maintain the two edges together and let the glue cure overnight.

Then I finish the surface with a heating device (a heating knife for finishing the surface) in order to smooth it a bit (not with a heat gun here). However be very gentle!

A further tip: I did the band to match 12 mm of wheel thickness you always can increase the height from all modern slicers. you can do that to get 15mm or more in height if you need in post processing.
I will howerver not use a height which would be higher than the thickness of my wheel. Better to be 1 mm smaller than too big.

You can find a better description in french on the website Tradzone where I described with pictures what I did.

I also have made own made artificial collophany liquid for you gurdy.

It has been adapted on a nerdy gurdy wheel 14 cm diameter. but can be added to bigger wheel as well. the spiral is 10 cm longer than what you need to cover the wheel. Extra length is allways good.(I know exactly how it sounds right :D)

UPDATE: I realised the spiral which was done with inkscape was not seamless. It created several seam points that are reinforced. It can cause annoying jumps of the strings due to the non straight geometrie.
So knowing that I used the spirale tool from freecad instead. which worked like a charm.
And therefore i can propose this v2 seamless.

Regards

Frog

Category: Music