Accordionist and product design student Gilles Schuringa has designed and 3D printed part of an accordion. His model could reduce the production costs of the whole instrument by up to 15%.
Gilles Shuringa with the 3D printed accordion. (Photo: Maria Rubal)
Building an accordion is a complex manual process that requires many hours of labour. Gilles Schuringa, accordionist and student of the Integrated Product Design master programme, took on the challenge of reducing the time and labour in the production process by designing a model that could be 3D printed.
During his master thesis, Schuringa teamed up with Pigini Nederland, a company that produces and imports accordions. The assignment was to design and print a prototype of the right side of the instrument using additive manufacturing techniques to reduce the production cost and make the instrument more accessible to new players.
The holes are covered except when the player presses a button that lifts the valve. (Photo: Gilles Schuringa)The basic principle of an accordion is the same as a blues harp: a steel reed vibrates when air flows around it, producing a sound. In an accordion, this airflow is created by the bellow. Each of the buttons on the outside is connected to a valve covering an airhole. When a button is pressed, an ‘arm’ lifts the valve, letting the air pass through.
After analysing the production process and identifying the most time-intensive steps, Schuringa set out to 3D print the whole external body and the inner mechanical system of ‘arms’. He combined this with a conventional bellow made of cardboard and leather, and traditional steel reeds. This allows for a user interaction and sound that is comparable to that of a traditional instrument.
Using 3D printing techniques reduced the production time of this part of the instrument from 10 hours to four. This could could reduce the cost of the whole instrument from EUR 1,000 to around EUR 850, while maintaining the product’s quality and lifetime, and a decent sound. Another advantage of this new model is that it can be disassembled. This would make Pigini Nederland’s tuning and repairing job easier and faster.
The current print is only a proof-of-concept, but Schuringa hopes to develop it further until it is market ready. “There is still room for improvement, especially with the sound.” Another challenge would be to build the left side of the accordion, “although for a try-out instrument for children it might not even be necessary,” adds Schuringa.
- Gilles Schuringa, Utilising additive manufacturing techniques to simplify the accordion production process, supervisors Rene van Egmond and Zjenja Doubrovski, Faculty of IDE, 27 June 2018
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