The PrintBone practice mute: A practice mute for your trombone, bass trombone, flugelhorn or trumpet that is compact, plays with little resistance, is light and sounds well. The partials are in tune and it is quite silent.
I let a few people test it, their comments:
'This one plays well in all registers. The one I actually bought in a store does not.'
'This feels more like playing without a mute than my own practice mute'
'This is actually in tune! I like the compact sound it produces'
In fact, a local teacher recommends these to his students and uses the version for trumpet himself.
There's a review in German of the trumpet version, in which it is favorably compared with three commercially available mutes - including measurements of how much it attenuates the sound Four versions are available:
You can open this in the customizer to change almost any dimension and the bell flares, meaning you can design this to be any practice mute for any brass instrument you want.
It prints airtight enough without supports in PLA on my Prusa I3 MK2 in 2-6 hours, depending on the quality you want. Tested to work in ABS, PLA, NGEN and PETG. NGEN and PETG seem to sound best.
Printer:
Original Prusa i3 MK2
Resolution:
0.1-0.3mm
Infill:
20%
Notes:
Pick any layer height you like. Supports not needed. Either set number of perimeters high enough to not require infill, or set infill to 20-35% - infill will only be used in a very small volume of the mute.. Set line width to 0.45 and check 'detect thin edges' in slic3r. it should print with three full wall lines all around with a 0.4 nozzle, or two lines with a 0.6 nozzle.
Glue a strip of cork, foam or rubber to the mute so it stays in the bell. The cork should form a relatively airtight seal, so all the air passes through the mute and not between the mute and the bell.
To make a template for the cork, you can use a piece of paper, wrap it around the mute, cut to the right shape. Or, a suggestion from a maker: use masking tape, adhere to the mute, cut it to the right shape, peel it off and make a template out of it for the cork, foam or rubber.
A printable template (with a regular printer or a 3d-printer) would be even nicer. Go ahead and modify the openSCAD files if you want to let it generate one :)
The author marked this model as their own original creation. Imported from Thingiverse.