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Academics
The Automatic Drum Tuner
Winner of the 2020 UCSB Excellence in Mechanical Engineering Award and CNSI Innovation Grant
Tuning the drums is a very tedious process that can take over an hour long for the entire kit, especially for beginners. To solve this, I collaborated with a small team of five multidisciplinary engineers to create an automated drum tuning device that cuts the standard tuning time in half.
Purpose:
The Automatic Drum Tuner was inspired by one of our team member's frustration towards the exorbitant amount of time it took to tune his drum kit before each show. There are many drum tuning devices currently on the market that tell the user which direction to tighten or loosen each lug, but there are no products that actually do it for you. Additionally, we expected to tune the drums more accurately because we were using mathematical calculations to determine exactly how much to turn each lug.
Design:
The tuner's housing was designed with user functionality first and foremost. Initially leaning towards a drill-like housing, the design shifted towards more of an electric wine bottle opener design because of the more ergonomic position the user would most likely be holding the tuner when in use. Ridges were added on the shell to help counteract the twisting of the motor. An improvement for a future iteration would have been to conform the shape of the housing to more easily conform to a human hand.
The knob and ring of LEDs were chosen over an LCD display screen because the tuner could display more intuitive stop and start signals by flashing all the lights red and green.
Implementation:
Many materials and manufacturing methods were considered for the housing structure. I decided on SLA 3D printing using Formlabs resin for the prototype, because that 3D printer was available for use in our design lab and was a lot easier to test iterations compared to other methods like machining. I also designed with the future goal of using injection molding because of quick production and low price per unit after the initial investment.
The tuner tip that connects to the drum lug was initially planned to be machined, but ended up being 3D printed as well for the prototype. Ideally a stronger material like aluminum would be used to prevent deformation from use.
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