My wife is into 3D printing and has designed a variety of things for printing with our home printer and also for professional printers. We are considering designing a bachi that can be printed with special flexible plastic. I’m not sure if it will work, but we’re willing to try. Has anyone here heard of anyone attempting to create or successfully creating 3D printed bachi, before?
I’m no expert on 3D printing, nor do I personally have experience with printing a bachi, but there’s a few forum topics over the past few years that might help, if you haven’t read them. Some things to keep in mind seem to be making sure the bachi is smooth, and that the plastic you use isn’t going to wear down with heavy use, especially if you would like to use it for tsugaru.
I am new to shamisen but have built and used 3d printers since the wooden printrbot. You can absolutely do this - the critical thing I think you touched on is the material. I am still waiting on my first shamisen so I don’t even know how much curvature there is in a bachi but you may need to just use a lot of “support.”
Once I get more comfortable with shamisen, I’ll be checking into this post and will also share and STL files I come up with.
Awesome! Lemme know how it goes! I’ll post my progress as well.
I got bored so I started checking out thingiverse for anythign shamisen related and sure enough, someone’s already done a bachi …
Excellent! I’m going to send the link to my wife. Perhaps we’ll use that design.
Seems to me that the handle would be too light or maybe light is better?
Hey Keith,
In regards to weight, many tsugaru players prefer a heavier handle (usually facilitated with lead weights) to emphasize the stronger picking.
But there’s nothing wrong with a lighter bachi; it’s a matter of taste and tradition.
I printed that 3D bachi in thingiverse, somehow the handle was really thick.
had the same problem with that bachi design. sadly enough the way mine was printed, made it impossible to customize. 