Quick Start Advice for Independent Whistle Printers

Which Model? We have found that everyone seems to have a favorite model. What prints well may depend on your printer, your filament, and your environment. We have found it useful to do a test print of a single whistle and then test it to see if it is loud enough for the sound to carry a few streets in an urban environment (around 90 dB).

A whistle is properly printed when it makes sound no matter how hard you blow into it, and you don’t have to blow too hard to get sound.

• Good Whistle Designs
• Intro to Printing Whistles

Instead of putting your mouth on a whistle to blow (needs sterilization afterward), you can test whistles with:

• Electronic cans of air
• Handheld vacuums
• Baby Aspirators
• Inflators for yoga balls / bike tires / air mattresses

If your whistle is NOT whistling correctly, the most common culprits are:

• Bridging errors: check your slicer layers before you print and make sure that your settings are not bridging the long way across your whistle. One way to check to see if your bridging is an issue is to cover the top of your whistle with a finger (creating an airtight seal on top) and see if the whistle blows better.
• Improper airflow: This can happen for any number of reasons. Sometimes there can be gaps in filament that allow air to flow out of the whistle in a way that prevents proper whistling, or sometimes seam placement allows those gaps. Changing settings like number of wall loops / seam placement etc may result in better airflow. Some filaments just work better for whistles than others. We have found the most luck across the board printing with Silk PLA, although our results vary.

See these pages for more details:

• Troubleshooting Whistle Malfunctions
• Optimal Bridges
• Slicer Tips and Tricks

You may be able to find a local group on the State Yellow Pages. If a local whistle-specific group does not exist in your area:

1. Ask your rapid response network if they are in need. National List of RRNs
2. Check for local / statewide immigrant rights groups by searching for (your place) + (immigrant rights) or (immigrant protection). These often have slightly different names depending on your area.
3. Look for people who are doing whistle events in your area: search Instagram / Bluesky / Reddit locally for your town + whistle events or whistlemania.
4. If you attend protests, bring whistles to protests; bring a card with your contact information. You will meet people who are doing whistle events doing this.

We’ve found that an email with, “Hi, I’m local to you and am printing whistles on my 3D printer. I can produce this number) of whistles per week. Do you need them?” is usually sufficient. The people who need whistles need as many as they can get!

Thank you, and good luck whistling!

Original PDF Guide