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A 3d printed six string....


rwillett

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Hi

 

Does anybody know where I can get non tapered 19mm maple cross plugs please?

 

I've looked around and Google provides tapered croplugs from various suppliers but 19mm seems to be a non starter. 

 

I looked at making my own but before too long had a drill press, a load of maple and some plug making kits in my basket and circa £400 gone before sanity prevailed. 

 

Tha ka

 

Rob 

 

 

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This picture was posted on the Underdog-Obscure, Trashy and Kool guitars and Amps group. 

It doesn't say how they constructed but could these possibly be 3d printed?

It would be a heck of a lot of work carving them. 

 

FB_IMG_1704115671559.thumb.jpg.d6de2ba9f731adf874d18144182eb016.jpg

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I'm guessing they are 3d printed but can't be certain. 

 

The outer two look similar outlines and similar controls, but the middle one is different. 

 

From a design point of view, the outline and the infill design could be anything so long as its strong enough to support everything. I used hexagons as other people had and so I knew they'd work.  It's probably a few hours work to change to somw of those designs. 

 

If they are 3d printed, not sure if it's one big print or smaller ones assembled. 

 

Those designs are neat though and I like them. 

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Looking at them again, the two outside ones are so similar and so complex, that I'm pretty sure they are 3d printed. They are too similar and too complex to be hand carved IMHO. 

 

Any information welcomed as I like them 

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43 minutes ago, rwillett said:

Looking at them again, the two outside ones are so similar and so complex, that I'm pretty sure they are 3d printed. They are too similar and too complex to be hand carved IMHO. 

 

Any information welcomed as I like them 

 

Do this work for you? I never know who can see what on these Facebook groups. 

This is where the post originated but there's little info about the guitars. 

 

As you say they must be printed rather than carved. 

 

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I've not done anything on the guitar over Xmas, due to a slight pink torpedo up from me, it's still in York and whilst thats the same county, it's 1.45 hours away so not easy to pop back for it.

 

I thought I've have a look at sanding the original body, this was the original one and I'm not sentimental over it at all.

 

So I've had a go sanding down the body with an electric mouse sander, these are the small triangular ones. I've never sanded PETG before so was interested in how it would work. I thought it would simply melt and deform. I was wrong. PETG is tough, and a small mouse sander even with a P80 roughness paper, wasn't making a massive impact on it. It was certainly roughing tghe surface, but it wasn't taking a massive amount off.  I might have a try with an orbital sander.

 

The intention is to sand, fill the gaps in, sand some more and get it as smooth as possible, fill the gaps again, get it even smoother and then try an undercoat/primer, then a few coats of satin black followed by an epxoy top coat. 

 

I'm not going to do all the body, just a sample section to test it.

 

I'm just experimenting with different fillers. OOn the right is a Humbrol Model Filler and on the left Vallejo plastic putty. The Humbrol looks like it is a two part, though it's all in the tube. The Vallejo seems to be thinner but we'll see. The Humbrol appears to dry quicker, but thats not an important characteristic to me.

 

Here's a picture of the tests

 

IMG_2032.thumb.JPG.0b14869588079d06f77eab9c0c330ef0.JPG

 

 

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The hex pattern is very popular.

 

Personally I am interested in the potential 3D printing offers to incorporate wild designs and textures ... battling spaceships, dinosaurs, fractals, logos, who knows what....

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Posted (edited)
18 minutes ago, Stub Mandrel said:

The hex pattern is very popular.

 

Personally I am interested in the potential 3D printing offers to incorporate wild designs and textures ... battling spaceships, dinosaurs, fractals, logos, who knows what....

 

There's no problem (in principle) with incorporating wild designs. The limitations are really around the printing area size. As I don't have a printer that can do a complete body in one go, you have to join things together, so you have to have a design that allows it be assembled. so where the join is, you need to have something approaching a body to glue or bolt things together.

 

So here's my outline of the guitar that I made. The purple line is the exterior and the black line inside that is the inside edge. The recctangle in the middle is the space for neck, pickups and bridge.

 

image.png.a944b8012f0ebc540092251c311f7954.png

 

All I did was design a repeating hexagon (not as simple as I thought it would be, I had to go back and do trigonometry from my school days) and overlay it

 

image.png.64171552a12ec6f0dc01bdc53512d397.png

 

I then overlay that with the maximum printing area rectangles. I tried all the angles to reduce the number of sections, but you still end up with four sections outside the modules that make up the bridge, pickups and neck. A bigger printer could reduce this but it will be a big printer.

 

image.png.61d52c3db98d374aa208c5eb085abb8b.png

There is nothing to stop me changing the hexagons in the middle picture to something else.  Perhaps large arcs as somebody posted earlier, my dragon drawing skills are limited, indeed my drawing skills are limited, so I would struggle, but so long as there is a picture to trace from, it could be done, with the caveat that where the sections meet, there has to be a reasonable amount of filament to join together.

 

Probably a day or less to get the design in (assuming somebody else has done the artistic work), depends on the complexity.  From a printing point of view, it's probably no extra effort to print and assemble. Would need to think about clamping points and how things like the control panels are built in, but nothing difficult.


Rob

 

Edited by rwillett
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3 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

Personally I am interested in the potential 3D printing offers to incorporate wild designs and textures ...

...but most of the people want something that Leo did.

 

There's something similar with meat and those protein based particleboards. So many try to imitate meat, although I would love to see/taste something totally different. Meat is there for carnivores, what would there be for you, @Stub Mandrel, and me? Something personal instead of bulk products?

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On 01/01/2024 at 20:00, rwillett said:

Looking at them again, the two outside ones are so similar and so complex, that I'm pretty sure they are 3d printed. They are too similar and too complex to be hand carved IMHO. 

 

Any information welcomed as I like them 

Just followed the Facebook link to the maker's page, Lex Leuthold.  He has this photo of the in-progress.  Yes - 3D printed.  Nice job.

8Z2sqYNh.jpg%20

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3D printing gives us possibilities to do something that's not possible to do with ordinary/old ways. These include carving, machining etc. 3D printing is very feasible for short (and in some cases long!) production series. But printing is at its best when you are not able to do something with basic tools.

 

Costs... well, if printing enables something, it's worth it. There are pages where you can up- and download new designs to print, but I still believe we are only in the beginning. Metal printing is evolving, spare parts can be made to age old machines (classic cars, anyone?).

 

I really think that personalized stuff will be available to all of us sooner than later. Refining a bass body or a neck profile will be easier than ever. That does not exclude those beautiful wooden instruments made by top luthiers, but maybe a few PLA based trials and errors are much easier, and faster to do before doing the deep dive.

 

Long live beautiful basses.

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I think I would ideally want to spec a machined aluminium neck, with a richlite fretboard on a headless bass, so that there is no wood on the instrument at all.

And then use a Roland pickup and V-Bass synth so that the bass could sound like whatever it needed to, without worrying about tonewood and all that stuff.

 

When are you going to be taking orders, Rob??

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Posted (edited)

Not sure I can machine aluminium to be honest, so that part is out of the question. 

 

Oddly enough I just started the design of a headless bass earlier today. The intention is to use a plywood backbone as I have with this guitar as there is no way a wholly 3d printed guitar using PETG or probably even with Carbon Fibre elements could cope with the stresses of bass strings. Originally when I thought up this six string, I was going to use aluminium as a backbone as it would allow the body to be shallower, however cutting and shaping aluminium is massively harder than plywood. Whilst things can be done with hand tools in aluminum, it's significantly easier with plywood. Aluminum has one key advantage and that it's stiffer than plywood for significantly thinner profile.

 

I also looked at carbon fibre. You can use hand tools for CF but you have to be very very careful as the shards of CF are dangerous. My garage is full at the moment as we have building works underway and I did not want to do anything with CF in the house as we have a dog and two cats. 

 

Plywood is a good compromise for me at the moment. 

 

I don't see why a Roland Pickup and synth can't be attached to any 3d printed guitar. I had my guitar plugged into a Marshall amp over Xmas and a proper guitarist (not me) was giving it some welly. He loved the design and how it played. It sounded great and I'm hoping the bass I put together will be as good. 

 

If anybody wants to commission work just let me know. 

 

Rob

 

Edited by rwillett
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430mm from the nut to the 12th fret. 73mm from the bridge to the back of the guitar, 100mm from the back of the heel to the end of the guitar and 170mm from the 12th fret to the end of the heel. Thats the dimensions of a Fender Jazz body and a TMB bass neck.

 

Everything else is just noise :) (pun intended)


Rob

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8 hours ago, rwillett said:

 

There's no problem (in principle) with incorporating wild designs. The limitations are really around the printing area size. As I don't have a printer that can do a complete body in one go, you have to join things together, so you have to have a design that allows it be assembled. so where the join is, you need to have something approaching a body to glue or bolt things together.

 

So here's my outline of the guitar that I made. The purple line is the exterior and the black line inside that is the inside edge. The recctangle in the middle is the space for neck, pickups and bridge.

 

image.png.a944b8012f0ebc540092251c311f7954.png

 

All I did was design a repeating hexagon (not as simple as I thought it would be, I had to go back and do trigonometry from my school days) and overlay it

 

image.png.64171552a12ec6f0dc01bdc53512d397.png

 

I then overlay that with the maximum printing area rectangles. I tried all the angles to reduce the number of sections, but you still end up with four sections outside the modules that make up the bridge, pickups and neck. A bigger printer could reduce this but it will be a big printer.

 

image.png.61d52c3db98d374aa208c5eb085abb8b.png

There is nothing to stop me changing the hexagons in the middle picture to something else.  Perhaps large arcs as somebody posted earlier, my dragon drawing skills are limited, indeed my drawing skills are limited, so I would struggle, but so long as there is a picture to trace from, it could be done, with the caveat that where the sections meet, there has to be a reasonable amount of filament to join together.

 

Probably a day or less to get the design in (assuming somebody else has done the artistic work), depends on the complexity.  From a printing point of view, it's probably no extra effort to print and assemble. Would need to think about clamping points and how things like the control panels are built in, but nothing difficult.


Rob

 

 

Me too, I  am great at engineering designs but the 'organic' shapes you csn do in Blender or similar elude me.

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4 hours ago, itu said:

...but most of the people want something that Leo did.

 

There's something similar with meat and those protein based particleboards. So many try to imitate meat, although I would love to see/taste something totally different. Meat is there for carnivores, what would there be for you, @Stub Mandrel, and me? Something personal instead of bulk products?

 

Well PLA is plant-based so ideal for a veggie like me.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Rob,

I'm in the process of designing a 3D printed physical pedalboard to hold my pedalboard gear and I came across this, which I thought could be pretty cool for your guitar body.

 

Sam x

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Sam

 

I had seen Voronoi stuff before and promptly forgot all about it. Its very organic shaped and almost Gaudi like. Thanks for reminding me about it.

 

The fact there is a F360 generator is great and once I finish the pickup winder, I'll look at using this again. Since I've now been converted to glue for PETG bits, I don't have to worry about flat sections and stuff like that for bolts.

 

I'd love to see your pedalboard with this as well. <hint>

 

The pickup winder is still progressing. Spent most of Sunday evening trying to understand the Vref potentiometer and how it works on a DRV8825.

 

Thanks


Rob

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