HELLO!!!! It has been quite a white since my last update. (Midterms hit like a truck!)
While I was home on Spring break, at the beginning of March, I put an hour or two each day into finishing up my models. I finished off the tenor drone entirely, and then I focused on the bass drone. I refined the top a bit more, and began sketching out the middle.
As for the tenor drone, I had mentioned in the last update that we had to pull it all the way out to get it to sound decent. I widened the diameter a bit, and removed the beading and combing, as I have already mentioned. I decided in that moment, in late February, to take a more modern approach to my pipes: I curved the bottom of the tenor drone, and added a slight narrowing to the top of the tenor, just to make it look a little wavy I suppose. I am unsure if this did anything to the sound, but if so, it was nothing notable.
My plan was to use the print lab at Moravian University, in my hometown while I was on break. I brought home my PETG and everything, but their large-format printer uses 2.85mm diameter filament and our’s use 1.75mm, so I was out of luck. I DID use that time to experiment with their scanner, and my friends and I scanned each other’s heads into STL files LOL
When I returned to campus, my first week back was insanely busy. I had lots of assignments due, but I managed to get into Jepson and print the first entire tenor drone off of Rebecca’s printer (both the new top and the first iteration of the bottom). The Eagle Pipe Band was performing at 4 different locations over the St. Patrick’s Day weekend, and I figured it would be the perfect test for the tenor drone.
When they came off of the printer, on March 15th, they were a bit stringy, and required the same sandpaper-wrapped-around-a-screwdriver treatment that I gave to the first print.
After cleaning these two piece up, I ran (literally) to the DKC to grab one of the new drone reeds that Cartland and Shannon had ordered, so that just in case this print didn’t work, I wasn’t messing with MY pipes right before St. Patrick’s Day. I drove to the Alvey parking deck on campus, put everything together, and gave them a go.
As you may be able to tell from the title alone, this was a riveting success!!! The tenor drone stayed on the pipes for bagpipe practice that night, ANDDD at every single performance throughout the St. Patrick’s Day weekend (we played for probably 3-4 hours total).
The only thing that worried me was, because I printed both piece straight up-and-down, the layers ran perpendicular to the thin part of the bottom of the tenor. It’s a little wiggly, and I’m not so sure how I feel about it (this is the part that we’re always adjusting to tune the drone). I asked the other pipers to be gentle lol. I don’t know how to approach fixing this, as I’m going to sacrifice the clean exterior if I angle the print, which is allllwayssssss a struggle.
However, the drone has been banging around in my case for a few days now, and still looks and sounds fantastic, so maybe it isn’t too much of a worry. I could find a way to increase the infill density halfway up the drone, possibly? I know that 3D Gloop is also a thing, which is a “glue” that can be applied to prints, and it will chemically bond pieces together. This might help to just secure the layers a bit more, but this is probably a last resort.
Today, I’ve spent a bit of time ensuring that my bass drone top matches my tenor drone top as much as possible- I can somewhat confidently say that the bass drone top is ready to be printed. If my second tenor drone is done, I might go ahead and get that started today! I just need to finished up the middle and bottom of the bass drone, and then the three stocks will be super easy. It may be a bit tough collection measurements for those, as I am not necessarily sure that I want to take them out of my personal bagpipes, but I will do what I must!
In early April, I’ll also be doing a workshop on creating a custom box for your DnD dice! I’ll be able to dive into some more complex aspects of 3D modeling with Onshape, so that’ll be fun!!!!! WOOHOO!!!
More updates soon! BUH BYE!
