About the Filawhackers
Boomwhackers are tuned plastic tubes you hit against your hand, a table or each other. Filawhackers are small printed versions covering one octave of C major, from C5 to C6. Each is a single thin-walled tube printed in vase mode, which makes them fast and cheap: the whole set takes about 85 g of filament.
The designer worked out the lengths from the physics of an open tube, then corrected by experiment, and the set is 'almost in tune'. Wall thickness matters: the 0.5 mm wall from a 0.5 mm line width is what they're tuned for, and changing it shifts the pitch, volume and resonance a little. Layer height doesn't change the sound, only the print time. The two longest tubes, C5 and D5, are split in two for printers under 30 cm tall and simply press-fit together.
Who it's for. Classrooms, families and music teachers. They're a great group activity, and the rainbow colour scheme matches the original Boomwhackers so the notes are easy to call out. The demo video shows the set in use.
What you'll need
Printed parts
- 8 tubes: C5, D5, E5, F5, G5, A5, B5, C6 (C5 and D5 in two parts for shorter printers)
Bought parts
- Nothing; glue is optional for the split tubes
Tools
- A printer with vase/spiralize mode; pick the folder for 25 cm or 30 cm+ build height
Build overview
Print settings
- Material: PLA (not silk)
- Mode: Vase mode (PrusaSlicer) or spiralize (Cura), 0 bottom layers
- Line width: 0.5 mm; the tuning depends on it
- Layer height: About 0.3 mm (0.32 mm used)
- Speed: 50 mm/s walls for 2.5 h total; 30 mm/s for a nicer finish (about 4 h)
- Tip: Slightly higher nozzle temperature for layer bonding; lower or remove the minimum layer time if cooling allows
Video
Play video: Filawhackers: 3D-printable mini Boomwhackers (loads YouTube)
Nothing loads from YouTube until you press play. Video thumbnails are © their creators.
Photos
All photos: Andor @fullydefined, from the design page on Printables, licensed CC BY-NC. We resized them and converted them to WebP.