This whistle is designed to warn a neighborhood of the presence of ICE agents. As raids ramp up, you can use your 3D printer to help local organizations stock up on whistles that will share them with community members. Contact your local organization and support them by making FICE whistle.

I'm a designer and been using 3D printers for quite a while. Rather than use existing whistles in the 3D model repositories, I started over and created a new one. This is a new single tone whistle, that's distinctive in sound, intense, easy to print successfully, and designed for this particular use. As a warning tool. Soon, I will add a dual tone whistle (A and C#) for protest events.

What makes this whistle different? The design goals: The sound needs to be full and distinctive. The exterior is customizable for local organizations to add contact information in readable form. To that end, add contact info/phone number, etc on the side as a deboss (negative) using the available tools in your slicer.

FICE whistles are printed on the side to get best print quality on the critical fipple, sound slot, and sound chamber. Printing on the side also gives you more readable text than if printed on top or bottom print surfaces. Look at the included Washington version to see what I mean. No worries, the information is actually on the bottom of the completed print.

The whistle is tuned to C# (depending on how hard you blow of course., The tone is distinctive and deliberately a little uncomfortable. Because of the sound chamber and fipple design, the sound is full for a small whistle and very intense. Warning: it is 118 - 120db. Unlike many 3D printed whistles, this one works under both low and high pressure blowing. Finally, if you follow recommended print settings, it should print well on just about any kind of 3D printer. Over 40 prototypes and lots of testing.

The whistle is small with a horizontal lanyard hole so it rests flat when worn. Printing takes 4.5 grams of filament and around 25 minutes to print. Earlier designs printed quicker but are not as rugged.

There are three model versions of this single note whistle. 

• FICE whistle that has FICE printed on the end. This is the one you can customize for your local organization. 

• Washington State version of the FICE whistle with website and phone number in place for the Washington Immigrant Support Network (WAISN.org) 

• A blank version if you don't like FICE or just want a nice whistle.

Finally, this is a very small 3D printed item often printed in large quantities. Printing models this small requires different techniques. Please read recommended print settings.

Print Settings

• Printer's used:

Prusa XL, Prusa Mk4s, Prusa Mini, Bambu X1C, Bambu Mini

• Rafts: No
• Supports: No
• Resolution: .15 or .16 depending on your slicer
• Infill: 15-20%

Notes:

I've created a lot of small models for 3D printing and printed around 20,000 small items so have a couple of recommendations.Successfully printing small things in quantiles require different methods, settings, and techniques than your average medium to large 3D prints.

Print settings

Though the whistle models are tiny, but they have a lot of mass for their diminutive size. That means they can get knocked off the plate easily. So, I recommend the following. 

• Use smooth printing plates if you have them, not textured plates. Textured plates work fine when printing small things in PETG. Not so much when printing PLA. Smooth is often best.

• When printing items of this small size and height I always use a thin layer of some sort of plate fixative and refresh it every few prints. Various dedicated 3D printing products work fine but so does a thin layer of glue stick.

• Slow things down. Particularly the first layer. Small contact area models like this benefit from a perfect first layer. 

The model was designed to be printed with inexpensive PLA filaments. The idea is for you to use up left over spools to print lots of whistles with whatever filament you have around and donate lots of whistles. Best to stick to regular PLA and not use filaments with added materials. IE carbon fiber, glitter, etc. I also avoid silks as these filaments are weak. And, it's a good idea to dry your filament before printing. Wispy strings inside the whistle cause problems. 

The included 3MF files include recommended print settings. Though the 3MF file was produced in Bambu slicer, the settings should transfer to Orca and Prusa slicers if you import the time. 

Design development involved over 40 prototypes. I've printed and tested them in quantity on several different Prusa and Bambu printers. If you follow recommendations Tthey should print fine on most any printer. 

Use .15 or .16 layer height. This results in better details for internal sound parts, the fipple, sound chamber and wedge cut hole. Use a .4mm nozzle. Smaller nozzles are not needed.

Always test first. Print out one whistle to make sure it works as a whistle before committing to 10-50 at a time. What you're looking for is a full, resonant sound at low and high pressure blowing. If your printer and/or filament are not well tuned and your whistle doesn't whistle try scaling the model to 105 percent. Note that sometimes different filaments give different results. Test first.

Slow your print down. You'll get a nicer print and have less problems with small models like this. With a small contact first layer, set first layer speed to 30 percent. For the rest of the print slow down outer walls and the top surface. Depending on printer and settings I've found it takes 23-28 minutes/per whistle.