rwillett

The printers are silent at the moment as I'm waiting for a pillar drill. Until I've sorted out the backbone for the bass, and making sure the flex has gone, no more printing. This is actually a good time to do other jobs. Not sure about the replacement bridge though. There's a lot of load through the tension of the strings. Let me know what you are looking to do. Rob

I'd be honoured to be able to contribute

If you want me to 3d print some surrounds for your pickups for free let me know. Would tidy up the gaps. Massive respect for this.

I thought it was Derek Smalls. To be fair it doesnt look that bad in black and white, slightly blurred and partially hidden. Suspect my kids would say the same about me.

A little parcel has just turned up, I may, just may, have over specified the aluminium I didn't quite realise how strong 12mm alumium is. The 6mm appears to be strong enough on it's own. Lets see how this goes. The equal length angle sections were brought to test whether simply adding in two quite thin bits of aluminium to the plywood reduces the flex enough. I suspect not, but lets see. No joy on local pillar drill, so one on order along with some cutting fluid. Rob

I Whilst glue technology appears to have come on in leaps and bounds, my knowledge of it is still stuck (pun intended) to the era when superglue came out, and it was the height of fun to put it on door handles or toilet seats. Yes I was that immature. Epxoy resin might well work very well, or it might not. I'm reluctant to try out yet another technology out that I know nothing at all about. I can manage a 12mm plate (or 2 x 6mm plates), box sections seem to require just as much drilling PLUS connecting together. All other things bneing equal (as I can't prove box section is stronger), I always go for the simpler solution. A pillar drill looks the easiest option and is needed for all the options. Will see if anybody in the village has one first though. Rob

The stuff below is me thinking aloud and might be complete and utter b0ll0cks. I'm guessing based on what might be common sense and might as well be verified by my dog. That might work BUT everything has to be perfectly aligned across both widths. The E string puts the most load and so that side of the baseplate will have more load. Joining the beams together is hard as you have to drill across four sections accurately and then through the beams to join it to the bottom of the guitar. In principle it sounds great but I think realistically it's a lot more work and I have little confidence in my ability to drill accurately that many holes. I reckon I have circa 0.5mm latitude on each hole. That's pretty tight.

Yes, I was looking for a wide and thin box section but couldn't find any side enough and thin enough. My maximum depth is around 15-16mm. Also the maths around box section stiffness is complicated. Part of the reason for this is that the Americans use KSI and the rest of the world use GPa. I think I'm.gping to get two 6mm plates 60mm wide and put a 3mm plywood bit in the middle, not that it adds much strength but I get back to 15mm. 6mm aluminum should be equivalent to 3/4" ply but it could be significantly stiffer. 2x6mm should be a lot stiffer. I could also try 6mm and 12mm ply. One other option is 12mm aluminum plus a 3mm bit of ply. The ply would (hopefully) help dampen the resonance of the aluminium. 12mm aluminium is 8x stiffer than 6mm aluminium. I don't know if 2x6mm is the same stiffness as 12mm. For an equal sized material the relative stiffness is the cube of the thickness. 6 x 6 x 6 = 216 12 x 12 x 12 = 1728 1728/216 = 8 I did pure maths, none of this applied nonsense. Rob

To be honest, I've been looking for a long time, > 6 months, for a pillar drill locally on eBay and nothing within 50 miles at a sensible price. A lot of old floor standing ones that would probably work well, but too big for me to get back. I'm going to order some aluminium flat bar 60mm by 6mm by 400mm and try and see how accurately I can drill it with a decent hand drill and if that doesn't work, I'll get a pillar drill. Not many timber merchants near me, the 15mm plywood was decent, worked well on the guitar, but not quite strong enough for the bass. I'll do some calculations later and work out what 6mm aluminium is equivalent to. Rob

After building all the parts for a new bass, and assembling, a big problem has come up. The 15mm plywood backbone is not strong enough and bends, only 1-2 mm, but enough. Not sure why this wasn't spotted before and am wondering if the latest batch of plywood is different to my previous batch. However its noticable so thats a no go. Am now reading up "modulus of elasticty" to try and work out how stiff plywood is and looking at making a composite of plywood and alumium plate or going to all aluminium for a backbone. If I do this, I'll need a pillar drill to get proper holes, which I was trying to avoid buying. Jeff Bozos will be loving this Bit of a bummer but hey ho, I'm feeling good after the England game yesterday so will just have to bite the bullett.

This was the first gen Apple Airpod. Customer feedback was very positive on bass response, pretty good middle, not so good on the treble. A number of people reported some difficulty in putting them in their ears. Noise cancelling was excellent though that may have been due to their ears being shredded by the bass response. The big issue however was battery life, even with the 24 full size lead acid car batteries, was reported as poor. Rob

Thanks. Watched the first one yesterday and will watch the other today. 3/16" Allen key on order as all mt tools are metric. Rob

I took the dog for a long walk on Sunday and decided to make some changes to the bass guitar design as: 1. I can reduce the printing time by around 20+ hours. I thought about how to build it slightly differently, reduce the support printing which takes approx 20+ hours (coincidence, I think not), simplify how I do it and make my life easier. if I ever print this again, it'll be quicker and easier. For the developers here, I've refactored a load of plastic bits (code). 2. I had a long walk with the dog so had chance to think. I use walks to plan things like this as I get 2-3 hours of uninterrupted "me+dog" time. I do get interrupted as the dog wants me to throw sticks for him, but you know what I mean. So I've spent the last week redesigning, simplifying and reprinting stuff out. I've now done all of the printing but before I start assembling I want to check all the dimensions and how the neck relates to the bridge, heights of everything. Whilst I can easily print spacers and put them under the neck and bridge, I'd rather spend time and get it right as close to first time as I can. So I've made myself a little test rig using the bits I have, and am trying out the bits and the relationships between them. The neck module had the hook strap built in so I used it as-is. Apart from that, it's quite a minimal bass. mmm...Interesting but thats for another day. I'm looking around for a decent set of instructions about how to set this up. I don't have factory measurements, but it's a Fender not gender Jazz neck and I have used my Fender Jazz as the basis, but it's not really a Jazz now. There's so many people talking about how to do it, I have no idea what is the right approach and would welcome somebody pointing me to a sensible set of basic instructions I can follow. My big worry is that the neck is at the wrong height but I'm not sure how I can tell. So any pointers to really good guides oreasy to follow suggestions for a muppet like myself, very welcome. Thanks Rob

Chris sold me four hipshot lightweight tuners. Zero issues, quick delivery, easy to work with and sensible. What more can I say Rob

I can see the Rick Wakeman cloak as part of the GAS.....

So long as it was therapeutic then.. .

If you need any plastic right angled stuff printed to avoid bashing metal, let me know.

I've a feeling the memory went with some other stuff locally. I'll check but suspect its gone. Sorry Rob

As t'other half is away, I've been looking at using XTC-3D as a coating for the guitars. Still not going to melt lead though... I've put quite a lot of effort into improving the physical appearance of the guitar straight off the printer and they look an awful lot better. However I did want to try epoxy coating bits to see what it looks like. All of the guitar bits on the island above are things that didn't work out so not touching good bits yet. First thoughts are: 1. A little goes a long way. I was working with 5g of the main ingredient and 2g of the additive and it did a lot. 2. It takes a long time to dry unless the temperature is above 22c. Three hours later it was still tacky at 16c. 3. The finish seems to have little bits in it. It's a bit like when you put a screen protector on your phone and get dust underneath. I didn't clean the parts but they weren't that dusty so not sure what went wrong. Not particularly impressed at the moment. 4. I have some black colouring to put in the epocy as well to see how that works on filler. That's today's experiment. So in summary, 1 out of 5 at the moment. Rob

Oh b0llocks. Missed that and am in York in the next few days. How do I miss these things?

I was going to say how fussy @TheGreek is, how just about anything offends his delicate sensibilities, how perfect things need to be, and then I clicked on the link and found out that he was absolutely right I'm not sure I'll sleep tonight.

Brought a load of bits and bobs from him. Controls, strings and stuff. Agreed the price, came next day, very well packed, zero issues, great comms. No issues at all, top bloke. Rob