Ka Mua, the Microlele
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Ka Mua (first, in hawaiian) is a soprano ukulele, but even smaller. Made for you travel/party. Uke on!
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Model information
- Source
- Printables
- Category
- Music
- License
- Creative Commons — Attribution — Noncommercial — NoDerivatives
After spending a lot of time (and filament) on some ukuleles over the internet, without being satisfied with tuning and sounding, I decided to model my own from scratch.
And so was born Ka Mua (first, in hawaiian), a 2-part ukulele, designed for being printed with little filament (considering it's a musical instrument). It takes a little under 300 g in ideal print settings.
It has 3 harmonic bars to improve sound volume a little bit, as well as some transverse bars for additional resistance.
The 330 mm scale is a little shorter than that of a standard soprano ukulele, meant to make the instrument a little more "packable", as well as the 30 mm overall body thickness. Also, it fits the bed of most medium printers.
Saddle, bridge and nut are merged to the instrument in order to ease printing. Body and neck are put together with a dovetail joint, no glue or screws required. The only extras are 4 guitar/ukulele tuning pegs and a set of strings.
The neck can be printed (diagonally on the printer bed) with 40 % infill (I recommend gyroid pattern) and 2 mm walls. Also, there is a 5 mm hole through the neck for a metal or carbon fiber rod to be inserted and glued. Epoxy glue is recommended. Without it, there can be some bending and the neck will become unpleasant to play, with the strings too far away from the scale and a terrible intonation. This effect will be worse with PLA* and way worse if you live in a tropical country like myself.
The 10 mm holes in the headstock are designed for common tuning pegs, no tricky or rare ones.
Print the body in the upright position with 100 % infill and higher resolution (0.12 or 0.16 mm). Upright orientation in this case is not the most resistant printing way, but the overall quality will be better, and otherwise the harmonic bars will start printing mid-air. Also, the 100 % infill will increse toughness a little bit and give better acoustics.
Supports are optional, depending on the calibration of your printer. But I don't wanna see anyone sad for a little sagging in the upper part of the sound hole, so I included a cover for it.
After printing it, attach the neck to the body with the dovetail and install the tuning pegs and the strings. Take a picture and start playing it right away, I hope you all enjoy it and have tons of fun. =)
I'm totally open to suggestions for improving the quality of the instrument. Just keep up with my profile to see future changes.
*Even though I recommend printing it on PETG or ABS, the model shown (black and silk copper) is printed in PLA, and it seems to be pretty solid and resonant.
