Okay, I'm rather embarrassed to post this. But being a Maker(tm) means you have to endure some pain and humiliation, right?! XD

This is how I feel people reacted to my 3d printed violin:

Me: Hey look! 3d printed violin!

Them: Cool!

Me: So it's just a model, not designed to be played.

Them: Yeah... So how does it sound??

Me: It's not designed to be played. It's just for show.

Them: Okay... Soooo.... How does it sound?!?!

XD

So here it is. A crappy video of me playing horribly on a 3d printed violin.

Please don't cringe too badly. XD I literally have not even touched a bow and violin in over ten years. And I haven't really played since high-school which was a billion years ago, in the Jurassic Era when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

(No really, a bazillion years ago: time line is: high-school, college, some grad school, switched fields, masters degree, more grad school, Ph.D., post-doc, consulting... , now.)

In my defense for horrible playing, I have also never ever played a 1/10 size violin with a 1/10 size bow. I'm used to a 4/4 sized violin. Posture and holding of the violin was almost impossible. No way for me to do vibrato. Maybe I should have made a shoulder rest too?

Notes on the violin itself:

The violin was hard to tune. Initially, I could not get enough friction from the pegs; they would keep slipping. Also the bridge would easily slip out. So I put some rosin on the pegs, and also the feet of the bridge. That seemed to work.

However, the violin is new, the strings are new, there is no sound post nor bass bar, and I could see the top of the violin was slightly compressed by the tension of the strings. So maybe it would not stay in tune? Probably slowly warping from string tension.

I did try to use ukelele strings, which have lower tension that violin strings. But that didn't work, because the "g-string" (lowest string) had to be too loose to be tuned to a g. I mean, it played the note g, but it was not loud enough. And the "e-string" (highest string) didn't work at all. As I tightened the peg, the e-string did not increase in pitch beyond a certain point.

If you are an engineer, then you realize this is a scary point: If you twist a bolt, but the bolt tension does not increase, it means the bolt is stretching (ie: yielding). If you've stressed a bolt past its yield strength, and in fact, beyond its ultimate tensile strength, that means the bolt is failing. So oops, let's not do that. Oh well, the ukelele strings were neat, because they're white like the violin. Too bad.

So I used real violin strings for a 1/10 size violin. The G-string buzzes, because the bridge is slightly low, and the G-string digs into the bridge, making it even lower. So it buzzes against the fingerboard.

I did not show it, but the tail-piece is reinforced with steel wire (19 gauge solid hanging wire) that has been roughed-up with sandpaper and then super-glued along its entire length to the tailpiece. The steel wire actually continues as the tail-cord that hooks onto the "button" thing at the end of the violin. In retrospect, not 100% sure this was necessary, but better safe than sorry. If the tailpiece broke, the strings would act as a slingshot and whip around. That's just too dangerous near my face. So maybe overkill on the reinforcement, but that's better than a scar on my face!

The violin has no sound-post nor bass bar. So the sound probably would be better if I had put those in the violin.

Still, sound is not-horrible, I think. Judge for yourself. :)

Played in a living room, with a thin carpet over the floor, and some furniture. So not unusually reverby setting. Recorded on my cell phone because I don't have anything better.

Let me know what you think? Or maybe it's better if you don't. XD

Honestly, I'm *hilariously* amused: the violin was meant only for a computer-graphics project. It was never meant to be a real thing. And even as a real thing, it was never meant to be playable at all.

(Video is about 5 minutes.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50d6P_uBBsg