FIT AS A FIDDLE
A student research group at the Georgia Institute of Technology is making beautiful music with its 3D-printed violin.
Written by Kayt Sukel
EACH FALL, A SIGNIFICANT PORTION of American schoolchildren will begin a musical journey, picking up a new instrument to be part of their school’s band or orchestra. Unfortunately, many students may not be able to participate in musical endeavors because of the cost. For example, string instruments, like the violin, can run upward of $300, even at the beginner level. So, Kevin Kamperman, a graduate student at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, who been playing the violin since he was seven years old, wondered if it might be able to create a less expensive but still high-quality 3D-printed option.
“I played in my school orchestra and then in Georgia’s Youth Symphony Orchestra. Music has always been a fundamental part of my personality and my identity,” said Kamperman, who also works as a research engineer in the Robotics and Autonomous Systems Division (RASD) at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI). “After looking at the art of making violins, which is known as lutherie, I started to pull together data to come up with my own violin design in a 3D computer-aided design [CAD] environment.”
Since he was busy with his engineering studies, this endeavor was more of a hobby at first for Kamperman. But when he registered for Carolyn Seepersad’s additive manufacturing and rapid prototyping course, he realized his dream of building a violin would make an excellent final project. He teamed up with fellow students William Davis, Inseo Grace Park, Gihane Rachid, and Lars Worlund to come up with the right fabrication design.
“One of the biggest challenges is the difference in material properties. Most string instruments are made of hard woods that are both strong and lightweight,” he said. “And what you see with Nylon 12, which is what we ended up printing the violin with, is a stark difference in the density and strength. We had to adapt our design to account for those discrepancies.”
Kevin Kamperman, a graduate student at Georgia Tech, has fulfilled a lifelong dream of building his own fully functional violin. Kamperman filed a patent on the violin, made entirely though 3D printing. Video: Kevin Kamperman
The group used simulation for verification testing, especially to ensure the design of the violin neck, which must handle 20 to 30 pounds of tension from the instrument’s strings, without warping. But the toughest part of the research, Kamperman said, was ensuring their design could effectively mimic the sound of a traditional violin.
“When you are trying to replicate a wooden instrument with composites, it’s going to sound different,” he said. “We had to alter the geometry in a way that you can best replicate the wooden sound. We did that through modal analysis, looking at the frequency spectra that the mass is vibrating at and then optimizing the resonance of the chamber to match what you’d see on a wooden instrument. We went through an iterative process to optimize our sound profile.”
Once the design was complete, the research team was lucky to have Endeavor 3D, an additive manufacturing solutions company in Douglasville, Ga., offer to fabricate the violin pro bono.
“We had originally planned to use polymer powder-based machines, but they were just barely too small to print the body, no matter what orientation we put it in,” he said. “We thought we would have to break up the body plates into pieces, but in doing so, we would affect the sound quality. We were very lucky that Dr. Seepersad reached out to Endeavor 3D and they were gracious enough to print our design for us.”
“When you are trying to replicate a wooden instrument with composites, it’s going to sound different. We had to alter the geometry in a way that you can best replicate the wooden sound.”
—Kevin Kamperman, graduate student, George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology
The resulting instrument backed up the team’s simulation results, providing warm, resonant lower strings (G and D) and then slightly more nasal sounding upper strings (A and E). Kamperman said he wished they could have done more, but the project was a “one semester build.”
“Even though those higher strings were a bit more on the nasal side, they were still more than acceptable,” Kamperman said. “Every violin has its own flavor of sound to it and while it was not a perfect result, it was definitely a predictable one. We had multiple violinists test it and they all said it was a quality instrument that they would play.”
One of those violinists was Kamperman’s childhood violin tutor, Robbie Bowie, who helped ready him for his stint in the Georgia Youth Symphony Orchestra. Bowie then assisted with acoustic testing, playing the instrument in GTRI’s anechoic chamber, a special room that absorbs sounds.
The tail loop and end pin on Kevin Kamperman’s 3D-printed violin. Photo: Georgia University of Technology
“She played the polymer instrument, my wooden instrument, and her wooden instrument,” he said. “We compared the frequency spectra of all of them and the 3D printed violin held up. In fact, according to some of that frequency data, the 3D violin sounded better in some ways than the wooden instruments.”
The team secured a provisional patent with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in December 2024. And while Kamperman remains busy with work and studies, he hopes to iterate the design to create a viable product for the market.
“With more work, we could make sure we have the exact tone we want and have the cost where we want it so a violin would be more affordable for K-12 students, or anyone else who is interested in getting into music and the arts,” he said. “But even this version is remarkable to me. I didn’t know for sure that we could do it. So just looking at it, holding it, and then playing it was like a dream come true.”
Kayt Sukel is a technology writer and author in Houston.
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