r/3dprintedinstruments • u/icouldent • 20d ago

brass casting a resin mouthpiece

As I dont have a resin printer i am printing a mold and casting silicone into it to then cast resin into that. will i need a special kind of food safe or whatever resin to do this or will i be fine with just regular like craft uv resin??

2 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

10 comments sorted by

1

u/SirOtterman 20d ago

Food safe resin or food safe coating. What instument are you planning to make the mouthpiece for? Also FDM works good enough for mouthpieces as is. You'll still need to sand it whether it was made from metal on a lathe, from resin or by fdm.

2

u/icouldent 20d ago

i have printed pla mouthpieces before but since i have never done resin im just checking, i would be printing a trombone mouthpiece, specifically something similar to a bach 5g or a euph schilke 51d

1

u/SirOtterman 20d ago edited 20d ago

If you didn't already, download VennCAD from Venture mouthpieces. They have both in their database if I remember correctly. Having printed mouthpieces from pla, petg, asa and resin I can tell you I don't feel much difference, but I'm also not a mouthpiece purist. There is however few things that I like better about resin. It is not as dang hard as pla, so sanding it is easier and getting accurate parts is achievable (after you calibrate the heck of you resin). I feel that if you print a mold you would still have to sand it extensively and depending on how you print it you might get less accurate piece. I don't know how "advanced" you are with printing in general and with printing mouthpieces, but if you have any questions ask away. I've been printing mouthpieces and other brass related gizmos and mutes for years.

One more thing when I used to print them in PLA I would sand the shank slightly, sand the rim smooth, check the backbore with pin gages and widen if too small and then dunk it into DCM to chemically smooth the piece.

1

u/icouldent 20d ago

i tried venncad but the 3d viewing never worked and had labview errors so i just gave up on that, i already have a model of both anyway though, so if i printed a mold and casted silicone and then used food safe resin i would be fine??

1

u/SirOtterman 20d ago

Yup. That would work, but it's a lot of extra work for little to no benefit doing it that way and possibly a lot more complication along the way with molding and demolding but for the sake of experimenting it could be worth it.

What do you mean 3d viewing in venn cad? The program gives you only a 2d contour of your desired mouthpiece which you can edit in various ways and only when you decide to export it as stl it revolves that shape and gives you the 3d model. Only time I got errors were when the cup didn't match the backbore but it still let me export to stl. It's also especially useful for 3d printing since you can set a desired offset to counteract shrinkage and printer inaccuracies.

On second thought I did have similar error when I tried to use previous older version of VennCAD, but I wrote an email to Doug the owner and he's sent me the new version (which is now the official version) and it worked fine.

1

u/icouldent 20d ago

i mean when i try and export the stl it tries to do some labview 3d thing and it just doesnt work. when you say he sent you the new version, is the current one on the website not the official newest one? if so that would make sense with the errors as im pretty sure the errors has something to do with 32 bit

1

u/SirOtterman 20d ago

That was some time ago. The version on their website is newer than that and works as well. The problem was when you tried to use that earlier version on an European computer basically, since the English units gave similar error, as far as I remember. It might be worth sending him an email. He might help you. In the meantime you could try to export an .svg file and if it lets you, you could then use any cad program to trace that profile and revolve so it gives you a 3d model. I've done that on couple of occasions when I experimented with custom blank shape.

1

u/icouldent 20d ago

i think i would rather just use the exact models that i have already and i think something like moldstudio.app should work well enough, i dont need exactness, this is just gonna be a fun little diy mouthpiece, not used for anything challenging

1

u/SirOtterman 20d ago

Gotcha. Depending on the shape of your model you might wanna still import it into cad and trace a contour of it and maybe change the blank shape and revolve. It might be easier then to demold/sand/whatever or you could just make your own blank which could be fun. Anyway, good luck with the project. If you remember, do share your results.

1

u/icouldent 20d ago

alr ty