Calypso DIY Tonearm Project - Introduction

Build your own Tonearm from 3D printed parts: 

Calypso DIY Tonearm Project

How it all began:
Some years ago when I was a student I bought a nice Rega Planar 3 drive set consisting of a Premotec synchronous motor, bearing, sub platter and glass platter. With these important parts in my hands, I wanted to build my own record player and started putting everything together. But when I came to the tonearm (after a delay of some years...), I realized that there might be a more demanding DIY engineering challenge than putting purchased parts on a wooden base and so I decided to make a tonearm.
I was inspired by the Well Tempered Amadeus record player with its golf ball tonearm, hanging on two nylon threads (it's actually only one thread) and being damped by silicone oil. It avoided machining the tricky parts of a cardanic bearing and was a perfect start to DIY tonearm making. This was the result:

Even if it's a bit tricky to set up, the silicon oil tonearm works very well. It enabled me to carry out experiments like changing the geometry, without being afraid to destroy the delicate bearings of an expensive commercial tonearm and so I learned a lot about tonearms when I used this device as an experimental platform. And some months later, I build my second tonearm, custom made for a good friend:

It is quite obvious that many parts of this arm were made using a mini lathe that came to my workshop meanwhile.
After presenting this tonearm, I got a lot of requests to build more of them which I had to refuse for many reasons (two boys, now 3 and 5 years old...)
During discussions with my friends and colleagues Daniel and Philipp the idea of 3D-printing the difficult-to-make-parts came up and after playing around with 3D modeling software, the first 3D printed parts were made: headshell and bearing body for a silicone oil tonearm:

Until now there were several optimizations of the headshell and the body as well as the implementation of a cardan bearing version, all having the same "interface" for the use of 10mm tube diameter.

Where do we want to go:
There is not the one "Calypso Tonearm". It is a collection of 3D-printed parts that will help you to build your own tonearm and will give you the maximum freedom to realize your ideas.

I will try to use this blog to post topics on building Calypso Tonearms, calculation of tonearm geometry,  and to present finished Calypsos made by other DIY tonearm builders.

All current 3D models can be found on shapeways:
https://www.shapeways.com/shops/turbolino
Shapeways is a commercial 3D-printing service that hosts all Calypso 3D models. You can order Calypso parts which will be printed for you on demand. You can also download the models as stl-files if you want to use your own 3D printer. (You need to have a Shapeways account to download models)

I hope Calypso will help to overcome one's inhibitions to build a tonearm. It is no rocket science!

kind regards,
Dominik