I told the production team I was going to create a custom Irish whistle in a meeting on a Friday afternoon. I started the project when I got home that evening. I printed the first version overnight. I fixed the headstock and printed that version on Saturday Morning.

Modeling in Fusion

The process started in Fusion 360, a 3d modeling program. I based my whistle directly off an existing whistle that I own. So I did a bunch of fairly precise measuring and then modeled the whistle using those measurements. Here’s an animation of that process:

Printing on a Bambu Lab H2D

Once I had a complete draft of the model, I moved to printing the first prototype. This is what that printing process looks like. Notice the organic structures that grow around the actual whistle parts. These are supports for parts of the model that “overhang” and wouldn’t print properly without something under them.

Playing the whistle

After a quick edit to the headstock, I reprinted just that part and here’s what the whistle sounds like. You can also see the printer I used over my shoulder.