A man by the name of Olaf Diegel made it from nylon using an SLS printer

Aug 4, 2014 13:28 GMT  ·  By

FDM 3D printers may not have a high enough resolution to make overly precise and detailed items or components for them, but there are other 3D printing technologies, like the selective laser sintering (SLS), that a man by the name of Olaf Diegel used to make his 3D printed sax.

Shown in the image gallery and the video embedded below, the saxophone is made of nylon and took 6 months to make, though it took so long partly because Diegel had to move from new Zealand to Sweden and had other projects to worry about too.

Admittedly, Diegel had to manually install all the metal springs for the keys, but he intends to include them in the keys themselves next time. This is still just a prototype, there to show that the saxophone's mechanism can be simplified and reproduced via additive manufacturing.

It is necessary to integrate the springs into the keys, because a plastic upstand doesn't provide the right amount of tension for the spring wire, which is hammered into the metal upstands of a normal sax.

Long story short, Diegel of ODD still needs to refine his design a bit before he can truly claim to have accurately reproduced the saxophone via 3D printing. Now we just have to wonder if the technique will push actual music instrument makers out of business.

3D printed Sax (5 Images)

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