If you want a good piece to print do a search on "Windy City Woodwinds 64 Tenor mouthpiece 3D Printer Files" They were selling these for about $150 for years and when they decided to close up shop about 18 months ago they made the files open source. These play really well straight off the printer but can be even better with a bit of hand finishing.

 

Yes I've been using their 56 alto model that I printed about a month or so ago. I'm very happy with it so far, and it took almost no sanding to get it working. It seals up (vacuum test) nicely when using cane reeds. Not so much when using synthetic or plasticover reeds, but that is also true for my Selmer and Yamaha mouthpieces.
I also tried their 64 and 72 models, but the 56 worked best for my playing.

 

Check the MSDS on the plastic - it may be not food safe.

 

Most of the standard and obvious 3d print plastics, like PLA, are food safe

 

If you want a fantastic mouthpiece, I am selling my 3-D green polymer octagon chamber alto mouthpieces through tomorrow at a discount…. But I will get you a tenor piece if you want one.

These are made of an unbreakable polymer, and I’ve had incredible success with them. They are hand finished by Brian Powell and Erik Greiffenhagen. Their refacing fees alone are almost the same as what I’m charging for the entire mouthpiece.

 

If you want a fantastic mouthpiece, I am selling my 3-D green polymer octagon chamber alto mouthpieces through tomorrow for only $175…. But I will get you a tenor piece if you want one.

Mark,

As a maker of very fine mouthpieces, how would you characterise the difference that the material--plastic, HR, metal--makes to your design process. If you were to make exactly the same dimension piece in each, say a Link-style, would there be any difference aside from mouth-feel? Or does the density of the piece make a noticeable difference? Or, in reverse, how do you choose the material for a new design?

 

Considering that they are now finding a significant amount of microplastics come from water bottles I don't know that there are any "safe" plastics just some that are safer than others.

 

Here's a good overview of food-safe 3D prints, and the differences between FDM printing with filaments like PLA and SLA printing using non-toxic resins.

How to make food-grade 3D printed models - Original Prusa 3D Printers

You’ve probably noticed that we mention the food-safe properties of some filaments. And it’s true, there are several materials that can be considered food-safe, or food-grade to be specific (only certain manufacturers have proper certification), but it’s still necessary to coat...

blog.prusa3d.com

The comments are interesting too.

 

From the link above:

"No print is food-safe without surface coating
Choosing the right filament and using a well-maintained printer is just the beginning. The print itself will never be food-grade for one simple reason – FFF 3D printing produces objects containing gaps between the layers. These gaps can become the breeding ground for the growth of bacteria and fungi, which can cause an illness. Of course, you can reduce the number of gaps by decreasing the layer height and adding a 100% infill, but the results will never be good enough. You should make the surface as smooth as possible. Unfortunately, this cannot be done properly with chemical smoothing: ASA and ABS are mostly unsafe materials and PLA/PETG can be smoothed only with dangerous chemicals. Plus, the result is never perfect – there are lots of tiny bubbles that can contain bacteria."

 

Check the MSDS on the plastic - it may be not food safe.

I recall reading a note from someone who 3D printed a replacement bean pusher for a coffee mill (the original part was molded or extruded plastic and would wear out with use).

The note said that due to porosity of the 3D printed product, it cannot be declared food safe.

This is obviously more of concern for a mouthpiece that gets wet with saliva during use. A coffee mill processes beans at much lower humidity, and never dripping wet.

If porosity is your issue, then why bother with MSDS?

FWIW, you should be similarly concerned with tooth patches of any material. The part that goes in your mouth is a biological breeding ground ’round its edges. Reeds are also porous. What then?

It’s amazing that there are any sax players over 25.

 

interesting as in 2019 I developed head and mouth cancer after almost 50 years of playing the sax.

 

also just saying I designed it too!

 

Since glass is food safe, I imagine no one has successfully come up with a glass mouthpiece that hasn’t chipped, or they couldn’t get the style right?

 

I've had very good luck with 3D printed mouthpieces. I print with PHA, and follow common sense mouthpiece hygiene practices. Haven't gotten sick or grown a second tongue yet, and I play them almost every day.

 

That’s the beauty of environmental toxicity, it can take several years of exposure before you get sick and then you 1) have a difficult time determining the source and 2) it’s too late to do anything about it.

 

There is an instructive lesson here from cutting boards.
Wooden cutting boards kill = dissolve bacteria, overnight.
Plastic cutting boards grow bacteria, overnight.
Cliver et al in Journal of Food Science totally established this quite a few years ago; the original findings by Kampfelmacher (in German) date from 1972 when polypropylene cutting boards first hit the market. Nobody has ever figured out what the chemical is in the wooden cutting boards that kills the bacteria, including E coli o157. Every species of wood worked, but note that bamboo doesn't work on E coli.
The takehome lesson here is that plastic grows bugs.
I understand the concern about microplastics but that -- IMHO -- doesn't have a whole lot to do with the kind of food safety discussion that we have here about "How safe is my sax mouthpiece, to put in my mouth?" I can assure you that if my mouthpiece were to be fabricated from wood, and left uncoated like a topnotch cutting board is oiled but not "finished", it would be bacteria-free. Of course my mouthpiece is plastic like everybody else's. Maybe I'll even go look and see if it has a brand on it; it came with my Selmer Bundy 2. I'm a newbie who played clarinet my whole life and as it turns out really disliked the whole experience; got my sax a few months ago; got the hang of it a few weeks ago; and I am so happy you wouldn't believe it. Turns out that nobody ever told me all these years that the register break on the clarinet is 12 notes, and on the sax it's a perfectly reasonable and rational and easy to riff on eight notes -- an octave -- duh. OMG.

 

There is an instructive lesson here from cutting boards.
Wooden cutting boards kill = dissolve bacteria, overnight.
Plastic cutting boards grow bacteria, overnight.
Cliver et al in Journal of Food Science totally established this quite a few years ago; the original findings by Kampfelmacher (in German) date from 1972 when polypropylene cutting boards first hit the market. Nobody has ever figured out what the chemical is in the wooden cutting boards that kills the bacteria, including E coli o157. Every species of wood worked, but note that bamboo doesn't work on E coli.
The takehome lesson here is that plastic grows bugs.
I understand the concern about microplastics but that -- IMHO -- doesn't have a whole lot to do with the kind of food safety discussion that we have here about "How safe is my sax mouthpiece, to put in my mouth?" I can assure you that if my mouthpiece were to be fabricated from wood, and left uncoated like a topnotch cutting board is oiled but not "finished", it would be bacteria-free. Of course my mouthpiece is plastic like everybody else's. Maybe I'll even go look and see if it has a brand on it; it came with my Selmer Bundy 2. I'm a newbie who played clarinet my whole life and as it turns out really disliked the whole experience; got my sax a few months ago; got the hang of it a few weeks ago; and I am so happy you wouldn't believe it. Turns out that nobody ever told me all these years that the register break on the clarinet is 12 notes, and on the sax it's a perfectly reasonable and rational and easy to riff on eight notes -- an octave -- duh. OMG.

"Educator Woodwind". "B5" on the mouthpiece
Figures. The Selmer Bundy 2 was the usual band instrument back in the day, vintage 1970s. It hadn't been played in many years, and it turned out that it was hit pretty hard. Woodwind & Brass Repair in Albany California made the repairs masterfully, got it in tiptop shape for a couple hundred bucks, including giving the bell one resounding directional smack on a piece of hard rubber kept glued to the workbench for just that purpose.