I figured you were, I just didn't know if you'd endure the headache of the other orientations in order to see whether something like "60/45/30deg angle, holes up" made any difference to playability/sound/etc.
--Patrick
Coming back to this idea. Because I have been printing these whistle bodies straight up and down, they tend to be fragile along the perpendicular. There's not a lot of mass to hold them together, and you can snap them in half with slightly more force than is required to snap a pencil. That's not a *huge* deal, because most musicians are used to taking care with their instruments, and I let people know that they're not as robust as metal whistles when they buy them.
But, I'm working on a "tuff" line. One of the reasons I've been experimenting so much with ABS and ASA is so I can make a whistle that's more temperature and UV resistant and also just structurally tougher. For folks who play outdoors, or want to throw something in a backpack, etc. But those perpendicular layer lines are still a weak point.
I tried printing these things at a 45 degree angle in ABS, and it worked great for toughness. I couldn't snap a whistle body in half with my bare hands with all of my strength. But the fit and finish were abysmal. So, here I am, prototyping whistle after whistle, with slight differences in angle values to see which one gives me the best compromise between looks and strength.
So far, at this angle,the finish looks great through the webcam. I'll know in about an hour how it actually turns out--and of course, I'll have to test it for strength. Which means seeing how hard it is to break. Which is always heartbreaking to do to a musical instrument when there's nothing actually wrong with the piece.
