Don't worry none of this is going to hit the bin, all useful scraps and bits for my other strange hobbies/videos I do!

You should make wooden cymbals and use brass drumsticks.

I have a 3d printer and the idea of trying to get plastic to ring like copper is the funniest thing imaginable

Pretentious cymbal reviewer: Beautiful, flat and short decay, good stick definition, rides well, buttery and dark, meticulously crafted

The 3D printed cymbals sound like when you miss a note in a rhythm game and there’s just a bit of the music missing from the song lol

These are a lot of hobbies that, when combined, bring out their respective worst 10/10

The useleness of these cymbals makes me feel better about my existence.

3D printing guy here to weigh in. Using compatible glues for each material is very important for a good bond. Not all glues will work well on some materials. That being said, there isn't much you can do to printed ABS to make it structural enough to stand up to a drum stick.

I love how he waits for the sound to "play out" after hitting a piece of plastic with wood

The best part is that as a trained drummer we know our guy is able to really control his strength on those sticks, so you know he was smashing them when he needed to

You absolutely should ask your 3d printing pal to try to make some cymbals out of metal infused filament, especially because there are some that are infused with bronze

wow incredible it sounds exactly like what i thought hitting plastic with a wood stick would sound like truly impeccable

I can tell you from first hand experience that ABS is terrifying to work with and almost never comes out properly. I'm extremely impressed that you guys actually managed to put something together that vaguely resembles a symbol out of ABS!

This is the most informative 3D printing filament guide I've ever viewed. I'm not even joking, all those stress tests I've seen and I never got an idea what it might feel like to hold, or throw at a wall!

Printing orientation would be an interesting thing to test. These are printed vertically which probably isn't the best since it's going to stress layer adhesion a lot.

Massive points to your 3D printing mate, CF Nylon ist NOF FUN TO PRINT and the prints turned out quite nicely. Also condolences to his nozzle as CF filament grind it down like crazy. And massive respect for the tpu turning out so well as well!

The TPU and Nylon surviving the longest definitely makes since since both of those materials are the most flexible and hence least brittle. It would take a larger printer with a large print bed but printing the symbol piece horizontally instead of vertically like these ones were judging by the layer lines and how they broke, may give some interesting and more durable results if you ever get the chance.

mate’s got medieval shields for cymbals

I bet if you put some kind of interconnecting tabs to "clip" the pieces in place, you could get the pieces to stay together better. The extra surface area for glue should at least keep the pieces from splitting. Also you're totally right about glues reacting differently to the plastic types. Some filament types even allow you to "fuse" pieces together using acetone, heat, or another solvent.

I seriously wonder what the floppy cymbal would sound like when covering the dark ride, like some weird cymbal suppressor!

3D printing metal has really come a long way. A lot of different alloys can be “printed” with additive machining. You might talk to your mate into going halfsies with you on a new metal rig. I’m a machinist so this is the content I live for; that and of course your regular scheduled programming.

most terrifying drum thing you've ever done

I reckon, with a couple modifications to the slicing, you could end up with some fairly strong 3D printed cymbals. If the print was sliced radially or cross-hatched (alternating direction each layer), you may end up with stronger quadrants.

Hi! Composite engineer here. You might want to set your printer to print along the perimeter instead of along the radius. This will prevent cracking from the edges up to the bell. Also, the glue joint butt joint will stiffen up the cymbals along the quadrant lines, that's why the Carbon/Nylon version seems to be holding up well : stiffness should be the highest and will be distributed more evenly, less concentrated stress along the glue line. I would suggest, instead of butt joint gluing, slightly thinning/scarfing the edges so that you can overlap each quadrant to have more gluing surface. Cheers!

I can't wait for the 3D-printed drums.

I'm actually surprised how neat the percussive sound they produce is. Probably has more to do with technique, mics, and EQing, but still. Someone in marching band way back in the day told how anything could technically be a percussion instrument.

As someone who works with 3D printers and such, what I would recommend instead of just gluing the peices together is to first glue, then use a soldering iron to basically melt the pieces together

I love how you didn't even bother to get them 3d printed in metal. Just a buddy printing in plastic. Legendary.

Thanks for making me stay up even longer

Best part of having a shitty sleep schedule (5:30am here) is that I'm always awake for a DankPods/Drum Thing/Garbage Time video drop 😎

Your love for tpu is so great, tpu is such a fun material and I never thought it would be used for a cymbal

I have been a musician for years but only started drumming a year ago, and it was because I saw a bunch of your drumming vids. So thank you for making it look as fun as it is.

I feel like the cymbals may have held up a little better if the print bed was large enough to print it all in one piece, probably in a circular pattern. Also, I would highly recommend printing them in a B8 filament. 😉

That slo-mo of the dark ride is amazing

Ok - this was the funnest video I've seen you do. I was cracking up so bad watching this. That says a lot! You make some damn funny and good content!

WOO! 3D printing content on The Drum Thing! 🥳 This is awesomely ridiculous and I love it!

Might be interesting to see something out of PEEK or a similar material, it's so rigid it actually goes ting like metal! Hella expensive though.

3d printed metal is a thing, but is unfortunately very expensive. While you can 3d print metal with a regular 3d printer it requires a few modifications and is a pain to do. You might be able to find a place online that will print your set in bronze once you have finalised your design

I hate how ridiculous you are with this stuff and I LOVE IT. You are a blessing to the drumming community with your videos mate. This is why I am SUBBED. I need ridiculousness lol

I'd recommend designing an interlocking edge on the quarter pieces if your 3D printer can accomodate it. The two remaining cymbal materials would likely benefit from the design change.

My 2 favorite hobbies combined, crazy to see how different your content can be from vid to vid

Keyed edges might be better for this than the straight edges. When you glue them together it's not in one big fault line, so it might hold together better. Something for the ol' mate to consider for Destruct-O Cymbals 2.0

I was expecting all of them to break but was generally surprised at some results! Noice video again mate ❤

I love the cuts to the bell so much. Just straight blind persistence to the inevitable stop sign sound.

My main takeaway is how frickin nice that snare sounds

would the TPU possibly be useful as a practice pad or even a drumhead? it didn't actually have a terrible sound, it just wasn't cymbal-like

This actually seems like a pretty useful video for comparing print materials for other applications.

This is really good educational video on the differences between filaments.

Tough to choose my favorite. So many rich tones.

That PETG one definitely had trouble cause of the filament change - it really doesn't like cooling down much between layers, and the color change means the first roll ran out and had to get a second one put in, which introduces a significant weak point

I know nothing about cymbals but listening to this man talk is all the entertainment I need.

Yay you popped up on my recommended with this channel for once🙏🏾🙏🏾

You could totally make a mini 3D printed drum kit with these

TPU is an awesome material. I've used it in the past to 3d print prosthetic finger tips, and robot wheels. PETG is also super solid and I think it might deserve another shot.

your videos never fail to give me a laugh and make my day better thanks for your amazing videos

I’d say the best case scenario’s for this would be prototyping (as 3D printing is already used so much for) practice (as you already stated) or triggering them and using them as electronic cymbals

You should try Acetone slurry glue for the ABS prints. You put the excess supports and some acetone in a glass container, let in melt down into a slurry and apply that where you want it to join. Having joints of some sort or even puzzle piece like sections between the pieces would strengthen them, since a straight edge is the weakest. (Please wear a respirator when dealing with acetone)

it’s like someone removed the sound from the footage and re-recorded all new sound effects but forgot to record a new cymbal sound

as a fan of 3D printing and testing strength of different filaments this was quite fun to watch.

Brilliant sound quality there mate!

This is such a cool experiment. Also, free drum concert? I remember the first DankPods video I watched being a weird iPod accessory video that popped into my feed. Absolutely loved it and every video I've seen since then, but to delve deeper and see the intelligence and pure talent behind the camera has been such a fascinating experience.

This was awesome. Super informative. Really makes you wonder how many different types of plastic Roland and the others went through before they found the right combos

Those bells sound AMAZING!!!

Why the hell did I just watch this? And why the hell am I going to watch it again?. And then again later? Lol. Nice groove by the way your snare work is excellent.

The TPU or the Nylon Carbonfiber Cymbal would actually fit really well into a practice set if you for example live in an apartment where you cant make too much noise but you still want that realism feel. You could also just use an electric drum kit, but you could use a few practice pads, 2 16¨ cymbals as crashes, 1 20¨ cymbal for the ride, and 2 10¨ as a hi-hat, and there you have a complete kit :D

I know you're not a teaching channel, but man. I learn SO MUCH about drums and audiophile stuff watching your vids, they're super interesting and its just entertaining as all hell to watch. As for the cymbals themselves I love how each material had its own "sound". Super neat to watch and hear, can't wait to see the next vid!

Oh man they sound so good!

The sound these cymbals made were delightful in their own way

This entire video did indeed end up being everything I expected it to be

If you could get a whole set of TPU cymbals and drums, that would be amazing. You could probably have really small drum heads printed too.

The Dark ride is the Cymbal counterpart of the "Hurr Durr 6 Hunjos" by "Ol' Mate Senny"

As someone who owns a printing business, I can tell you every symbol that broke not at the glue broke at layer lines. If they were printed in a different orientation, those would not be weak spots they would support it plus, you need different glues for different plastics when 3-D printing.

Exactly as underwhelming as expected. Brilliant job!

This man has a lot of creative ideas

The zoomed in bell hits are hilarious!

That bit about glue is absolutely correct. Different plastics have different chemical bonds with glue and need different formulations for the chemical reaction to fuse the pieces instead of the glue just becoming a hard shell that's holding on with friction. The places the cymbals broke at were layer lines, these were printed on a flat side of the quadrant just to get them to fit on the printer, I know that pain, I'm constantly dealing with that. The layer lines are a weak point unless specially treated after the fact, so I'd either love to see the cymbals printed laying down, which would be extremely difficult space wise, or put them through a process called annealing, which would heat them up enough for the plastic to slightly melt again and fuse better, creating a better bond. Annealing is usually used to release internal stresses but for 3D prints, it's a way to make layer lines stronger.

Fantastic video but a couple of things I had in mind. For the structure, I wonder if it would be doable to do these in thirds or something as less separation, the better. And also maybe some flexible coating like plastidip or a hard resin like epoxy would be beneficial. Or hell maybe a full blown cymbal made of resin would be awesome to watch the creation of.

You and your 3d printer friend should try to do a snare or something where you can put your own head on it, it obviously would be a more intensive project and would take a long time but I think it would be hilarious

I work with 3D printers, this was bonktastic! Great to see TPU appreciation

These could actually make some pretty cool cymbals for electronic drum kits

I think the fails in the material itself could be mitigated by not printing all the layers in the same direction. The joints might be a challenge though but maybe there's a way to make like a channel or something on the edges that the parts snap into and can be glued there.

This man discovered in one video, what took the combat robotics community years. TPU and CF Nylon are some of the toughest plastics you can print

Seeing them plastic cymbals get hit and how they wobble and break, made me realize how much ducken abuse actual symbols have to endure, and this over prolonged periods of time. M8, actual brass symbals have my respect, way stronger then my will to live!

I honestly liked that PETG had more of a click sound on the bell, rather than the thocky sound of the rest. And the TPU looks amazing and sounds like a nice pad.

2:59 Actually fascinating to see the shockwave ripple through the hot glue joints.

Haha imagine youre on a gig and your cymbal just does this 2:36

no idea what i expected but this is definitely not far from my expectations

I think if anything these could be cool cymbal covers/damping for practicing when you need to be quiet!

5:12 thats no moon

these would be so cool with triggers on them, the black and red one, although floppy, also had a really cool look

Re-melting is needed to make regular FDM prints to last. In this case, mold release (heat resistant paint works in some applications) and two cymbals, the printed part sandwiched between them, pop in an oven. You will struggle to break solid PLA, it is very hard material and is one of the best materials for any instruments. It acts very much like wood. But when printed we have sometimes only third of the surface of the lines melted together, and the melting does not happen very deep, so we are linking the polymers at the very surface. Re-melting is one way to make it truly solid and have it be one, uniform material with polymer links going all directions in the same, chaotic way. To make it even better, if it is cooled down very slowly it can become semicrystalline; instead of random "freezing" of the polymers (amorphous state) larger grains of well organized polymers will form. That means they are packed more efficiently, polymers have more links with each other and it makes it even harder and more temperature resistant and should, at least in theory, have better properties for musical instruments. FDM prints have sort of "wood grains", it has different properties depending on the orientation, like wood does. Also, there is non-planar printing which probably is the way to print these. The layers in non-planar printing are not flat, they can curve... Which means that these "cymbals" were printed the worst possible orientation for the purpose, and the reason is obvious: planar printing these would've required TONS of support material that is wasted, and printing would've taken 10 times longer if we printed these flat. Now they are printed vertically, which is always the weakest direction. Tension pulling or shearing layers apart is 1:3 to 1:6th weaker compared to optimal (planar), in the best cases.. with non-planar printing it would be probably ten times stronger.. But that does not negate the need for the support material, unless we hack a touch probe and create an off-set mesh.. and then print on top of a cymbal..

Great stick definition!

Thank you for the slow motion bit.

Very cool to see how how they failed along the print layer lines, it would be cool to see how the destruction would change if the quadrants were printed flat (in the orientation they'll actually be on the kit) instead of vertically, I imagine that would add a bit of strength but the amount of supports that would add to the print would be awful. Another technique that could help is printing the materials a bit hotter than usual since you aren't looking to get precise details and the extra heat would help the layers adhere to each other better. Would also be interesting to try different glues, plastic welding, or a combination of both. Man if I wasn't on the other side of the world I'd absolutely offer up my printers to help try out some different things, hope you play around with this idea more in the future!

Thank you dankpods for making this life changing video.

Didnt think I'd find the nugget reviewer's youtube channel for music doing 3d printing stuff. Well played.

This was a great demonstration of how much of our cymbal tone comes from our drumsticks

I would love to see if you could make little dinky 3d printed splash cymbals, and program it to form in a spiral instead of sheets? Maybe see if the structure would have any effect on durability? Great vid, mate.

I can’t wait for 3d printed cymbals part 2!

truly some of the sounding cymbals of all time