Here is a project I just could not help myself but build. A 3D printable Ukulele with a body as large as I could fit standing upright on the printers here. The intention was to make it as large as possible, using no supports, and without the need to combine too many components together. By printing the base upright, thus it having a flat bottom, means I can store the Ukulele on the end safely which feels pretty cool. And best of all it sounds pretty swell too.
It also got me wondering what else musical you can 3D print, one quick look online I found an Ocarina, a Fiddle, a Magic Death whistle, Bagpipe components and even a Trumpet. All with free files readily available to print.
The overall feeling of this project was deep breaths to make the right decisions and a gradual build of excitement. Ever since I got the body of the guitar printed (which took 2+ days to do so) and saw how beautifully it came straight off the build platform I just had this feeling that this project was going to come out crisp. The Polymaker PolyWood (PLA) filament used for the body of the instrument produces an excellent reverberation because of the density that matches wood. See below for the build video.
So here is the process I go through to create a Concert/Tenor sized 3D printed Ukulele. And a quick disclaimer, the strings and metal tuning pegs are not 3D printed, I promise to do better next time. Check out the video for the entire build process and below are the contents of this guide. And just have a look at how happy I am with it all completed seen on the right. Smashing.
The contents of this Ukulele build can be seen below.
- Parts Required for Ukulele
- Tools Used
- Project Build
- Acknowledgement
- Where to Next
If you want to build your own 3D printed Ukulele (look here for the CAD files) or want to ask questions we are always available to answer questions and queries. Also, if you have ideas to add please let us know your thoughts!
Parts Required For Ukulele
Below is the part list used for the final design.
- 3D Printing Filament to produce Body, Neck and Head of Ukulele. For this project, I utilised Ultimaker Tough PLA White and PolyMaker PolyWood filament. Both of these are PLA composite materials.
- Ukulele or Guitar Metal Tuning Pegs. Any good Musos Corner will sort you. Ukulele specific Pegs are less high than Guitar ones and can feel cheaper. I bought the Guitar one and now have two spare tuner pegs so that's what I recommend)
- Ukulele Strings. They are different from Guitar Strings and are always made from Nylon. You can always cut them down so ask for Ukulele Baritone or Ukulele Tenor Strings as they will be the longest strings.
Tools Used
Below is a list of the tools I utilised to make this project a reality.
- 360 Grit Sandpaper
- Super Glue or SCIGRIP Weld-on 16 (Check this guide comparing them)
- Chopsticks/Paddle pop stick to smear the glue
- Soldering Iron
- Bluetack
Project Build
There were three main stages to the construction, CAD Design, 3D Printing and Assembly. After that, it is all about tuning and playing (which I have been able to do both for the last couple of weeks successfully!). So this project build is broken into those three sections.
CAD Design and Slicing - So the Z axis on my 3D Printing machine was 300mm so that was the dimension I would base my Z-Axis with. I wanted to avoid using supports entirely for this project. I could have made the pieces bigger by angling the components diagonally but this would have lead to wasted material.
So, these were my limitations. So, I made the body of the Ukulele 300mm Tall. Doing this while scaling evenly lead to a 140% increase in size for all the components of Solstie’s Soprano Model. Making everything larger like this did have some consequences. The Ukulele would now be a Tenor/Concert size. The Neck and head now had to be two separate parts to be printed by the machine. Also, the holes for the Ukulele Tuning Peg were now too large. The gaps for the strings to run over had also increased. Also, the height of the head was thinker which meant less room for the tuning peg to wind with. These all were dealt with in Fusion 360. There were also a couple of errors around the fretboard which needed to be repaired otherwise the guitar would be unsymmetrical along the top mirror plane, absolutely could not let that happen. I also wondered if this would affect the sound produced or if the notes would be altered however to my ear everything seems sweet and scales work as they should.
The Base was printed with 100% infill which didn’t matter too much because I had also selected it to have maximum wall thickness. I also split the base into two distinct sections. This you can see above. This meant I could use the ‘Make Overhangs Printable’ for the lower half of the base. Check out more Exciting Cura Features for More on that setting. If I did this setting for all of the Ukulele Base then the soundhole would become altered. However, by doing this just for the bottom half it made for a nicer overhang surface and an elegant rounding to what otherwise would have been sharp and some steep edges. It does take some finesse to get both sections to perfectly overlap. This you can see below. I thought I had but on close inspection, the overlap of the top and bottom has created a surface sheen that I did not expect to see. The print for this took 2+ days.
I wanted to bring some extra flair to the neck component, so I decided to print that with two different materials using the Dual Extruder head on the Ultimaker S5. The colours I chose would be Polymaker Wood and Ultimaker Tough PLA White. This ended up creating a much more appealing end result as the body blends more elegantly into the neck. When printing this required a purge tower and Ooze shield. These would be necessary, particularly as the white filament is very easy to mar or smudge with excess brown filament on a nozzle. I follow through with what I mention in the Dual-Coloured 3D printing Guide to get a really nice finish. The Polymaker Wood had 40% infill with 5 wall thickness as I was concerned about mass balance (Centre of gravity is a nifty tool to increase anxiety found in Fusion 360) and 100% infill for the Tough PLA. Using this stronger material eased my concerns about the strings bending/imploding the Ukulele.
To be able to create dual-coloured prints you need separate CAD models to represent both materials. Deconstructing a mesh file with surgical precision can become a real nuisance quickly. The best method is to take a bulldozer to one size ripping it away, then cleaning up the mating surface. Save that half of the model. Then undoing everything to get back to the original file. Then taking that metaphorical computer bulldozer to the other side and cleaning that side up so it mates correctly. For this Neck I wanted the two components to come together perfectly without any niggling issues, so I took the time to precisely create two STL files from the original. You can see the two CAD Stem models below. The orientation I printed the Stem was upright. I used the ‘Make Overhangs Printable’ Option which resulted in nice frets. Frets are consumable so the next Ukulele design I create will have stainless steel frets and inlays as well. However over a couple of weeks of playing, I am yet to see fret deformation from the strings, Ukulele nylon strings are softer than metal guitar strings. The print for the neck took 2+ days.
Often when jumping between Cura and Fusion 360 the software messes with the dimensions so do take the time to double and triple check all the dimensions before taking a sliced model to your 3D printer. You can see me doing this below for the Stem.
Finally came the Head in which I repaired the holes to be slightly smaller and printed laying flat on the build plate with 100% infill to ease all my fears of it bending or twisting under the pressure of the strings. The Print for this took <1 day. As you can see all the prints for this ukulele took substantial time. I wanted the parts to look great directly from the machine so I made the printer run slower. Slower Prints = Better Finishes. Make sure your printer and filament settings are absolutely dialled in and, if you can, have an external power source that can kick in seamlessly if the electricity supply ever has issues.
3D Printing - An Ultimaker S5 was utilised to print all three of the printed components. A 0.1mm layer height was used with a 0.4mm nozzle. I had been printing components with both the White Tough PLA and Polymaker PolyWood so I knew I had the settings dialled in for both. I would take extra time cleaning the build platform to ensure the best result. If you want to learn more about how to print excellent models check out the guide Improving 3D printed Models. Below you can see an image of the Body of the Ukulele being printed, the dry fit of the neck to the body as soon as I got the neck of the print bed and the ooze shield and purge tower used for the neck.
Assembly - Whenever combining 3D printed components always sand/scrape up the butting components. I used 360 grit sandpaper for this purpose. This will increase the surface area of the combined parts and this will improve the strength of the connection. I also always make sure to cover the surface area of both butting components with glue and press both components together. When possible, utilising clamps will create better connections, which could not be done here. I used a paper towel to clear off any extra glue. For superglue, it will reach maximum strength within a couple of hours. For SCIGRIP Weld-On 16 it will reach maximum strength after a couple of days. So for the Ukulele, I left the SCIGRIP connected parts to dry overnight. The connection between the stem and neck ended up needing to be repaired in which I used superglue to firm the connection. This you can see in the image below.
So with the parts connected to each other, I started test fitting the tuning pegs. Practise fitting was done using some Bluetack to hold them in a rough location. Then I got the soldering Iron to temperature and pressed it through the gaps in the Tuning peg mounts to make holes for the screws. After doing this make sure to clean the soldering Iron TIP and re-tin the tip. Then I started to screw the pegs into the head. You will notice here when I am screwing in one of the screws that the head of the ukulele disconnected. To fix this I went straight to my stash of superglue and connected it back up. Since then it has been doing a very good job at staying attached and I have been taking this Ukulele on some adventures.
Then with all the tuners firmly connected it was time to attach some strings. Start at the base and thread the string through the hole then back around to itself. Then wrap the string around itself three times similar to tying the first half of a surgeons knot. Pull until secured. See this below.
Then pull the string out to the top of the head and chop the string with some clippers at 2 inches further than the tuning peg. This gives you enough length to wind onto the peg securely. Attach the string to the peg by simply wrapping it through the hole in the peg once and then start winding. See this below
So thread the string through the tuners and then tighten up. This requires a lot of winding so definitely get your hands on a string winder tool. I 3D printed a print-in-place string winder just the day before which you can see me using here. Make sure you are winding it the right way so that the strings are closer to the centre. Also, help the strings wrap over themselves evenly on the tuning peg so that they are even and not bunching up in one spot. Keep using that winder until the string is a little bit taunt and then repeat the process for the other strings. Keep in mind the strings will stretch a whole bunch after you first put them on. With all the strings attached is time to give it some preliminary tuning.
Once it has been tuned you will need to re-tune it multiple times over the next couple of days until the strings have settled. My favourite way to tune at the moment is using a free phone app called GuitarTuna, definitely worth checking out if you lack the skill like me to tune.
Acknowledgement
Big thanks to Ian Hanna aka Solstie for creating such an amazing ukulele model to base my version of the Ukulele from. There are some major differences between each of our designs but it was phenomenal having his work to fall back on and study. Link to the files right here.
Where to Next
The next Ukulele I want to 3D print will have slots for the frets so I can install metal frets and inlays. As mentioned before frets are a component that wears out however after my couple of weeks using this ukulele I have yet to run into any issues or even marks on them so not too concerned currently. That Ultimaker Tough PLA is proper tough. Next design I would like to do some more interesting pattern between the fretboard and the back of the neck as opposed to a simple line. Also, I would like to print the base using a wood filament that has actual wood particles inside of it. My curiosity makes me wonder whether it would produce an even nicer noise. I also find myself curious if I could sand back that wood fibre material and create a sunrise patina on a Ukulele. That would be pretty swell. I also know the second I get my mitts on a large enough build platform the very first thing I am printing is a double bass.
Super psyched with the current result.
