About the Overly-Complicated Trumpet
A normal trumpet's valves send the air through extra loops of tubing to lower the pitch. This design does something deliberately more roundabout, as the name admits. Each of its six valves is spring-loaded and pushes out a small U-shaped slide, like a mini trombone, to lengthen the tube. The three short slides add 70 mm each, but only need pressing 35 mm because the U-turn doubles the distance. The other three are longer.
The designer worked out the slide lengths from a standard B-flat trumpet's valve combinations. So the familiar fingerings map onto combinations of these six valves, and a conversion chart on the page shows which. For example, a trumpet's second valve corresponds to any one of the first three slides here. It was designed in Onshape, and the page includes STLs plus G-code for a Prusa MK3.
Status. This is an ongoing project. The designer was still working on new bell shapes to improve the sound and had promised fuller assembly notes. For now there's an exploded view. Check the page for updates.
Who it's for. Brass players and tinkerers who enjoy mechanisms. Expect experimentation rather than a finished concert instrument.
What you'll need
Printed parts
- Frame, mouthpiece and bell
- 6 top valve caps and 6 stem caps
- Stems, bottom valve caps and slides in 35, 45 and 55 mm sizes (3, 2 and 1)
Bought parts
- 6 springs to suit the 35, 45 and 55 mm valves (3, 2 and 1); ? spring specs not given
Tools
- None specified
Build overview
Print settings
- Material: PLA
- Layer height: 0.2 and 0.25 mm (Printables metadata)
- Nozzle: 0.4 mm
- Supports: Orient and support like the supplied G-code if you re-slice
Photos
All photos: GCV3D, from the design page on Printables, licensed CC BY-NC-SA. We resized them and converted them to WebP. These adapted versions are shared under the same licence.
2 more photos on Printables ↗