Constructing Clarinets: Barrels, Part 2
When designing anything, it typically helps to think about how even basic things may go wrong.
I learned the aforementioned tip this Wednesday. After waiting 14 hours for the University’s 3D printers to finish building the clarinet barrels, I realized that the both of the holes meant to intake the rest of the clarinet were too small, which meant I couldn’t use the barrels that I had just printed.
After feeling like a complete moron for a few minutes, I began asking “Why did this happen?”
Were the nearly brand-new 3D printers in the library calibrated poorly? This is quite unlikely, as the machines are calibrated daily.
Perhaps I just got one poorly calibrated machine? That’s highly improbable as well, as I had ran two of the 3D printers simultaneously, and both of the barrels had the exact same length of 62 mm, which was specified in the .STL files, so that suggests that the machines were working properly.
Maybe I’m just a moron? That’s pretty hard to disprove quickly, so I decided to try and recreate my barrel-making process. I re-measured the model clarinet barrel I used for dimensions, and I managed to get the same dimensions as those seen in the .STL files. I made sure the measuring caliper I was using was zeroed properly, then I measured the barrel again, and got the exact same measurements.
I was getting quite frustrated now, so I pulled out a ruler as a joke and measured the model barrel with that.
I got measurements with the ruler that were slightly higher than those that were acquired with the caliper. This discrepancy confused me, which led me to grabbing another clarinet barrel (that I knew was 66 mm long), and measuring it. The ruler measured the barrel at 66 mm, and the caliper measured the barrel at 62 mm.
Other than the fact that I’m slightly annoyed by the fact that I’ll need to buy a new caliper, this isn’t that big of a deal, and these two silly designs will be done by next Friday’s post. I intend on uploading a couple of blind sound tests for it as well, so look forward to that.
If there’s anything to be learned from this, is that you should always make sure your equipment works properly, and to look for any sources of error in your projects. It might might just end up stopping you from wasting lots of your own time.
