Stradivarius Violin Project

Creative Director and Co-Principal Investigator
Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology, Blacksburg, VA, 2014
Funded by the Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology (ICAT)
~Awarded tenure in spring, 2016

The 3D Printed Stradivarius Violin Project involved the 3D scanning, modeling and 3D printing of a Stradivarius violin. Current advances in optics, lasers and x-ray technology and post-processing methods provide the ability to accurately measure an object’s geometrical characteristics, even with high complexity and access restrictions. Chris Williams and I used this technology to explore the potential of digitizing a violin’s geometrical shape accurately. The process starts by CT scanning the desired object, which, in this case, was a conventional violin. The CT scan produces a data set of very thin slices of the object. Next, software interprets those slices and generates an accurate point in three-dimensional space guided by the color mapping of the x-ray. Due to the x-ray’s diffractions, the surface obtained suffers from noise artifacts. These need to be removed, or smoothed out, and then converted into surfaces through re-toping. At this point, the digital object is exported to computer aided design (CAD) software, where it can then be further manipulated and transferred to a finite element (FE) modeling package. At this moment, a physical mathematical model of the object is created and used for comparison with experimental results. Through this entire process, several occasions lend themselves for error with the primary case being the re-toping process.

As creative director, I investigated fusing two of the previously mentioned methods in order to increase the accuracy of this process. The CT Scan process was aided by a laser system (FARO® 3D laser scanner) to improve the re-toping process.

Collaborators: Pablo Tarazaga, PhD (Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, Virginia Tech), Chris Williams, PhD (Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, Virginia Tech), David Ehrlich (Outreach Fellow, Fine Arts, Virginia Tech) and Stefan Hersh (Violinist and Violin Maker, Darnton & Hersh Fine Violins, Chicago Il)