rwillett

This is half way in printing the part of the guitar where the bass bridge will go. It's 27 hours long and so far its printed 1/3 of the wall height and an awful lot of infill to support the cross beam. The support in this print is organic support. I normally use a hexacomb support and make the middle of each support structure as wide as I can but not too wide, between 5-6mm. However I find that it leaves a horrible pattern on the underside when I cut the supports away. So spent a few days testing organic supports which are tree-like and seem to be slightly randomised. It turns out these are a lot easier to remove and the finish is quite nice with a mottled effect. This is the model in PrusaSlicer The underside of the model using hexacomb supports, this is the best I could do. This surface is hidden but I always hated it as it looked like garbage. and with organic supports, whilst it is slightly rough, its not ugly like the hexacomb support above. As I'm printing at a much higher quality and infill, this printing takes a long time so am contemplating a 3rd Prusa to speed things up. Not sure what the CFO would say, Rob

There's a lot of very nice kit there. if anybody wants to leave it in my house for a day, week or year, you are more than welcome

Not done much of an update for a few days as work has got in the way. I found a design issue in the way I'd used Fusion 360 and unpicking it took a long time. In the end I rolled back the design history, fixed it and then spent a long time fixing the issues as I rolled forward. In the end, I used the time to fix the issue AND to make the guitar a lot simpler to print. As I was struggling with PETG warping, I used 3dLac to hopefully adhere the corners down an keep them down. Even reducing the size, cleaning the bed, using 3dLac spray, I was still getting a tiny bit of lift on the pointy outside corners. In the end I put a 5mm brim on and 3DLac and that seems to have solved the issue. The downside now is that I have to remove the brim, but a deburr tool does that very well. Here's a video of somebody testing it out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-lD_NbTpOo So now I have eight pieces to print. Six are no intervention printing, so kick them off at any time and they print through to the end, no staying up until 01:30 to embed nuts. Two do require nuts but I can't change that. I've also made the plywood backbone wider, simply because I can. That was the design issue before. When I changed the width of the plywood backbone, the whole design blew up in a big way. The older version with slightly narrower plywood has shown that the guitar doesn't bend with "normal" bass strings, so thats one milestone achieved. I have all the control bits now, including decent bass strings, so push on now to get it all printed. Another 4-5 days to finish the printing off Rob

John Thats very kind of you to offer the parts. I will be making a headless bass at some time. I'm not 100% certain exactly when but in the next few months certainly. Long term plans are: 1. Finish this bass off. It's a prototype but a lot better than my first six string prototype. Its strung and tuned and I'm leaving it to see what happens. The strings are the cheapest I could find on Amazon at £7 a set. The action might be a little high at 10mm as well Its not been setup at all and I just want to see if the backbone holds out or it breaks in two or more pieces. 2. Sort out the electrics, I was intending to use my own bass pickups that I'd wound, but I'm not there yet, see point 3. 3. Finish the guitar winder off. Thats stalled as paid work has got in the way. I'm still writing code and need a few solid sessions to get it done. 4. Decide if this bass is going to be coated in epoxy to smooth it out and make it look a little more professional. This does depend on the bass being in a single piece, which at the moment is up in the air or rather leaning against my desk. 5. Get the NW Bass Bash sorted out and do a little promotion on it (hint hint) to get as many people to come as possible. 6. Think a bit more about the design of the the headless. This is ongoing TBH. Trying to work out the asthetic is important, I could make it very, very industrial with stainless steel pipes or it could go very organic or it might go in a very different direction. Ultimately the middle will have to look something like this as you need a neck, you need to put pickups on and you need to have some sort of bridge mechanism. Also I have to keep earning money doing real and paid work. Rob

Very little of this is a Fender, the neck and possibly the bridge, not that sure about the bridge TBH though. I wasn't particularly looking for a Fender neck, but this one feels nice and has a very nice weathered and heavily used look, which kinda fits with the industrial look. It was also dead cheap Rob

@Muzz Thanks for the comments. I am assuming that you mean a Steinberger but my knowledge around this sort of tech is a bit limited. I think you are after something like this. The neck fits on the right. The bridge is also completely wrong but it shows the aim. I do have headless bass bits from ABM (thats expensive stuff), both at the bridge end and the end of the neck. I do have two other bass necks I can use. I am not cutting the Fender neck down, sorry. I do have another design idea for the headless version which might be next after this one. It may resemble the headless Westone bass from the 80's. Not because I liked it, but I came up with a similar idea. The weight of the body with no hardware added is 1.3KG I've now strung the bass guitar up to see if it breaks. Thanks to @JohnH89 I'll post a picture later one way or another, hopefully with the guitar still in one piece. Thanks Rob

John Thank you, a simple explanation that has eluded a large number of tossers on YouTube. Let me know if you need anything 3d printed. Always happy to help. Best wishes Rob

Ok, I give in, what is the secret to stringing a Hip Shot tuner with a slot in the top? Every bass I have has a hole in the middle, I run the string through the middle and I turn the key and it tightens and thats it. I cannot get the strings to stay in the Hip shot tuner slot. Whats the magic incantation one needs to chant whilst doing this? Do I need to sacrifice something? A small plectrum or something? I've searched t'internet for the last few hours and if I see one more video of a pompous w**ker spending 20 minutes pontificating about his greatest and latest modification to his bass I will scream. I do not need to hear your life story, I am not interested in the delivery and the grand opening of a cardboard box to film the contents, I have seen tissue paper before, this is not the birth of a god. If you are going to make a video, have the common sense to learn how to edit it to be concise. Perhaps remove the bits where you ramble, where you drool or just randomly look into space. Watching most of these videos is like reading Dickens, a man who was paid by the word, and by god, can't you tell when it takes 12 pages for him to turn the handle on a door. These videographers must be paid by the second. Rant off. Can someone point me to how to string a bass with a slot in the tuner, something simple, something short and something that doesn't encourage me to go postal. Many thanks Rob

Thats a good idea. Just printing pick guards and will look at that

Why can't I have accidents like that? My accidents normally consist of removing parts of me through incompetence and trips to A&E to meet the nurses who are fast becoming family friends. When they greet you by your first name, you know you've come too many times.

Gorgeous. You must tell me how to have a happy accident

Have now printed all pieces, I redid a few as I wasn't 100% happy with the results. Printing at 0.2mm does a lot better quality than 0.3mm but takes so much longer. Checked the measurements and the bridge is in the right position. Might like to move it back 5mm but thats a quick print of the bridge adapter and six bolts. So that seems to work (or appears to). Printed a couple of round plugs to hold the pickguard nuts. You can see the large round holes in the picture which are empty whilst the control panel has five of the plugs glued in. I'm becoming a big fan of FloPlast as its simple to use, doesn't ooze out, welds quickly, doesn't expand and is very, very strong. Aesthetically, it looks right. The proportions looks good, I know that @tauzero hates the headstock here, but it is what it is. Next steps are cutting the plywood backbone to the right size, and drilling the mounting holes in the right place. So to make it easy, I've printed a drill jig, I would have had the plywood cut accuratley using a table saw, but my neighbour has just broken his foot and can't get into his workshop, so I may have to pull out a saw or even worse, a circular saw, and do it myself. <gulp> Then, bolt the middle together, no glue, and see if the el-cheapo strings I have snap it into two pieces Plan B if they do snap, is an aluminium and ply backbone, Plan C an all aluminium and Plan D a Carbon Fibre backbone. Thats for the weekend. Rob

What is this FTW of which you speak? Fitness To Work? For The Win? F**k The World? Forever Two Wheels? Free the Whales? Free To Watch? Feel The Wind? For The Will? Fight To Win? Finding The Way? Feed The World? For Those Wondering? Ford Truck World? Forschungszentrum Telekommunikation Wien? Fear The Wire? Free Trade Wharf? Florida Tax Watch?

I did read more up about it and I found that out. I have 4-5 Arduinos anyway, so will keep using them, the 2K limit is a challenge but I can make it work. The ESP32 doesn't seem to have quite such a large eco system around it, thought it does look very capable. Perhaps V2

Thanks Never tried that. What's the finish on the bottom like after using 3dlac? Rob

I have now found that there is a limit on just how big you can print on a Prusa printer without the edges possibly lifting or warping. Some filaments, PETG is one, are slightly fiddly to print, you need a very consistent temperature across the bed and if it's too big, the edges can lift very slightly from the bed, this may only be 0.3-0.5mm but thats enough to be noticable. I found that some of the very large prints were slightly lifting and warping. The solution to this could be: Put an enclosure around the printer to keep it at a high temperature. This puts the electronics at risk, so you normally move the motherboard and PSU outside the enclosure. This is a lot of work and takes up a lot of space, so is not really an option here. Heat the bed even more. I run that at 90C already so not keen. Use a glue to hold the print down. Possible but the bed needs to be cleaned afterwards. Print micky mouse ears to the corners so that there is more adhesion. I don't have much space left to do that, so not an option, also it leaves marks on the model. Change the cooling fan so it works less. Bit tricky and I've never had much success with that. Reduce the size of the print. I'm going with the last one as its not that difficult to make the prints smaller (a few mins work) and then weld them together again afterwards. The glues I use actually weld the plastic, so it melts it and then the bond is very, very strong. This does create more join lines but since I'm printing at a higher resolution than before, the quality is significantly better than the last six string. I'm quite pleased with the finish and it's starting to look significantly nicer. I am very picky, so thats a big bonus. I may slightly redesign the pickguards to cover the join lines. However given the higher quality of print (and is noticably better), this may not be an issue. Overall splitting the model down into smaller parts doesn't increase the overall printing time, so instead of 38 hours for a print, it's 2 x 19 hours (or so). This means I have delayed actually assembling the guitar for fit, but the prints I have redone look good. I'm still intending to try and epoxy refinish with a black colour pigment. So thats black on black. I may call this model NSB-1 (None So Black) Rob

I don't think thats a bad looking guitar. I'm unclear as to why you would take a 12 string to a six string, but hey ho. It seems a nice looking guitar. No idea what it plays like, and I think he might benefit from a sales writing and marketing course, but if I was offered it for £50 I'd take it,

I've now decided that after I finish my 3d printed bass ... ... I am going to give up all my worldy goods, throw away my shoes ands walk barefoot, I will give up meat, and strong alcohol (though perhaps a small cider on a Sunday), forswear strong drugs and carnal passions, wear sackcloth and rub ashes into my hair and then sit at the feet of this master luthier so I can learn the ways of guitar building. I am clearly a novice and not worthy,.

Can't see the picture. Would love to see his latest work

Would you?

It looks like the LCD itself is sloooooooow. The i2c bus works at 100K. It's not much faster than a decent modem but it's enough. The timings for changing the LCD Display are quite large, I didn't realise TBH but I am where I am. I've just got the i2c packet stuff working now. Just sending down "Hello World" from the Uno to the Mega and it's a lot more reliable and simpler. Wire.beginTransmission(1); Wire.write("Hello World 2"); Wire.endTransmission(); I'm getting 13 bytes every time which is more than I did with the serial comms. It's non-blocking as well (AFAIK), so it looks OK. Now I need to get bidirectional comms, initially an ACK and then some more informative stuff. I have Arduinos around me and shields and I've just spent a few weeks learning more about how they work. No idea about the ESP32 so will stay on these as it looks a lot more promising, I'll work with a 2K variable limit. Will force me to be creative and selective. Rob

Yep I know the maths. I also have never built a bass before, and to be honest, I don't have a particularly long history of building many guitars. So far I'm up to two completed. I can't imagine Fender and Gibson quaking in their shoes at the moment. So I'll build this one and learn from it before I go the next one. I have most of the parts for a headless bass but wanted to build a normal bass first to learn. Also the length of your suggested top horn worries me as it's thin and long. Not sure I would have much structural integrity there. I'm still not cutting the head off a Fender neck. If anything I'd sell it first.

I remember the wobbly ZX81 RAM pack. 8KB and 16KB? Didn't the ZX81 turn the display off for certain instructions as it couldn't refresh the screen display and execute the code at the same time? Was it 1Mhz or something? perhaps it was 4Khz Kids today don't know they are born. Rob

And for those of you who remembered when memory was expensive and we really, really, really had to save memory This is the output of one of the sketches for the Arduino. This is for an Uno which has 32KB of program space (where the executable resides) and 2K (Two f%^&*@£ing KiloBytes of memory) I have washing machines with more space. I have ball point pens with more capacity than this. My sodding cat flap has more storage space than 2KB. I suspect the dogs glow in the dark collar has more than this. I've spent athe last two hours writing string arrays to sit in readonly mode to get more space for local storage and the stack. 2KB of local variable space <shakes head and goes and opens another bottle of wine> Kids today, don't know they are born. Sketch uses 3120 bytes (9%) of program storage space. Maximum is 32256 bytes. Global variables use 368 bytes (17%) of dynamic memory, leaving 1680 bytes for local variables. Maximum is 2048 bytes.

What makes you think I'm not a grumpy old git now? Modbus is too professional for a hack like me.