rwillett

I was just about to pull the trigger on this but the fact the strings were an 'unknown brand' stopped me. Oh well, I'll keep looking 😊

If I had any idea what you are talking about I might do it. You may be confusing me with somebody who is competent in these things....

Both printers are now back on line. Two new E3D extruders from Amazon and some quick changes and some recalibration back for 0.4mm nozzles and we're printing. As the next lot of prints are circa 9 hours each and need constant attention, I'll start tomorrow.

I've got two already and I'm still not making £100K a year from both of them....

I'll print you something off (once I've repaired both my printers tonight) for nothing and post it off. Ping me some simple dimensions. No charge. Rob

The CFO and I went to a covers festival near Penrith, Fleetwood Mac, Kiss, Guns and Roses, Foo Fighters, Smiths, and a few others. £20 for the day. The weather held out, though it was very muddy, I sat in my foldable chair, bopped a little and loved it. I wasn't a massive Foo Fighters fan, but now I've heard them live (so to speak), I'll check them out more. Kiss were good, and Guns and Roses were probably better than the real Guns and Roses as they were them 20+ years ago. I'll never see most of these now, but I will happily go to another day of covers bands and will happily fork out £50+ for the next one. Rob

I do keep looking at new printers but the Prusa Mk4 hasn't really grabbed my attention even though I couldjust about justify it through the business. The Bambu printers look good but the closed nature of their code stops me dead in my tracks. Creality printers are OK but the Prusa was, until I managed to break both of them, dead reliable and relatively pain free. I live in a reasonably large house and the agreement with the CFO is my office is my office and I have the garage, everything else is off limits for hobbies and work. The garage isn't draught proof and is cold and slighly damp, can't put a printer in there, so it has to fit in my office. Two Prusas, a decent colour laser printer, three monitors, laptops and desktops plus all my other stuff, guitars and telescopes do limit the desk space available to me. Now if I was making £100K a year from printing, then the CFO and I would have a different conversation, but I'm not, so we aren't Rob

Yep, seen that one. I wonder if £200 is close to his OBO though Bigger issue is that I simply do not have enough space in my office for a printer of that size. Rob

Thanks for that. Thats this one https://www.crealityofficial.co.uk/products/creality-cr-m4-3d-printer-creality-uk-3d-printer-store Not cheap at circa £1,000 but just checked and I can print the whole guitar within a 450mm x 450mm print bed. Wonder if I can find a cheap second hand one? Whilst I like the Prusa's, the biggest they do is 360mm x 360mm. Tempted to get one but its a hell of size.

Non prescription drugs 😀

That bed is so big I can see it having micro-climates in each corner I'm sure there are lots of cheaper ones out there. Rob

It could be this one https://www.amazon.com/Creality-Printers-Largest-Auto-Leveling-Quasi-Industrial/dp/B07BB1JSMF Thats 500mm x 500mm x 500mm. The whole of my guitar fits on it I just reconfigured PrusaSlicer to be 500x500x500 and it only takes a few days to print, so I think I've got something wrong here. If I set myself up printing these things a for a business, then buying a big Foxtrot Oscar printer would be one of the first thing I'd do. Its a hell of a size though Also I'd worry about levelling that monster. It no longer seems to be manufactured but this one appears to be available at a bargain price of circa £8K https://www.amazon.co.uk/Precision-Extruder-Printing-Auto-leveling-Pre-Installed/dp/B0C9JLQJKF/ref=sr_1_34?keywords=large+3d+printer&qid=1699982089&refinements=p_36%3A118669031&rnid=118657031&s=industrial&sr=1-34 Rob

Wow, that looks great. It also looks like it's on a significantly larger printer than I have.

Hi Thanks for this, looked at the link, it wanted me to join a group about Creality to get any further and even using Facebook in an isolated Facebook container on Firefox with Apples email hider, makes me feel dirty and so I baled out. Was the link interesting? Rob

And because life suddenly throws you curve balls, both my Prusa printers are now broken. 1. The cables to the heater element on one have frayed away and because I have to be able to heat the hot end up to remove the heater element as it has filament on it, I need a whole new head. This involves quite a lot of work dismantling the head and redoing all the cabling. 2. The second Prusa is now giving me "Thermal Anomoly" errors. So suspect I may have shortened somethings out changing nozzles. Suspect that will need new cables if not a whole new extruder as well. A new extruder is on order and two spare heater elements and two spare themistors are on order and should be here in the next day or so, but until that time, this project is going nowhere The joys of 3d printing, sometimes you just want to cry. Rob

I love Blues, they say that what you leave out is as important as what you leave in. I made my sound my leaving everything out …

Nah, we're in the lower football leagues compared to the astrophotographers. In the US, there are people with $100,000 setups. The latest harmonic mounts (that's a thing), large 8" refractors or 30" reflectors. The cost of the refractors goes up approximately as the cube of the increase in the radius. High end dedicated cooled cameras, computer driven everything. The one thing that the AP people don't prize particularly is vintage stuff. An original 62 bass is highly sought after, a 62 telescope not so much. Some vintage telescopes are sought after, but not to the degree and to the premium that people can charge here for an old bass. And the mounts can cost a lot more than the scopes. A hell of a lot more.... Anyway, back on topic. Just looked at printing the lower left, Even at 30% draft quality, nine hours I may look at splitting this down into an inside and outside .... Decisions, decisions, decisions.... Thanks Rob

@Stub Mandrel Never tried the tough resins, all the resins I've used have been quite brittle, but I'm no expert in resin printing. I'm not aware of any printer that could handle the size of a neck, never mind all the stresses and wear and tear. The shape I chose here was something to hold stuff together. At the end of the day, I suspect ths shape makes no difference in this model. This is a prototype to test the theory as I was intrigued. It's simple enough (relatively speaking) to chane all the outside bits for a Flying V or an SG or anything really. The core of the project is the neck, the neck holder module, the neck pickup module, the bridge module and the plywood backbone. Everything else is just noise. I have done screws into the print, I have a little business doing astrophotography bits, but I found that embedding nuts is far stronger as you can put a lot more load as its pulling against a significant area, and as you say, if you repeatedly screw and unscrew, your lose the integrity of the screw mount. I have no idea about the material creep once under tension. My intention is to tune it up, and then leave it for a few days and see how much it needs retuning. Now printed the top right element and attached it to the neck clamp module. The 4 x M3 bolts are very tight and seem to work. No idea if Loctite is neededyet, that may be an option for later. I'm holding off on attaching the neck itself until I've sorted the nut out. No idea what to do with a nut, so time to learn. Rob

It's not ready for print a neck. 1. We can't print a neck in one piece. Printers aren't big enough. 2. Structurally the material isn't strong enough. 3. No idea how it would resonate. 4. The material doesn't bend reliably to allow the neck to be tuned. Apart from that, no issues.

So Been in a number of boring MS Teams meetings and have used the time productively to go through a cross sectional analysis of the guitar mm by mm. The aim of this check is to ensure that where I have a bolt that links things together, there is the entrance hole, a clear pathway through the object, an exit hole, a hole for an embedded nut, there are no 'thin wall's and it's all the right level of material. This is really painful as you have to force yourself to think about every single way that things connect. Some areas require access holes to get to the bolt and these need to be checked. e.g. the thickness of the neck clamp module is longer than my longest bolt, so I have to make an access port, basically a hole around 8mm in diameter that the allen key can get into the tighten the bolt inside. You can see it below with the purple rings. This means I can't attach the neck until I attach the top right strap bit, I need to print it first and it's 5 and a bit hours. Also I've just realised my neck doesn't have a nut so thats on order as well. The work list never ends Rob

Just tried S739401 in https://www.guitardaterproject.org/fender.aspx and that doesn't work either Doesn't work in https://serialnumberlookup.fender.com/lookup/ either. What am I doing wrong? Thanks Rob

Also the serial number doesn't pop up in Fender database. However I have had issues with that system simply not working, so who knows... Lots of red flags here. Rob

After a few iossues with the printers, a themistor was playing up, I managed to get a bit more done. At the moment, I'm printing to test the concept and fit. The printed parts are draft quality and will change for the better if it all works. Shouldn't make any difference to the sound but nicer to look at. This is the back of the guitar with 8 x 22mm countersunk screws attaching the bridge and neck pickup to the 15mm ply. I made a drill guide to ensure the screws all fit as the holes only go part way. You can also see the neck module and the guitar neck. This is the front of the guitar with the bridge and neck pickup in place This is the front with the neck in the neck module and slotted on. I haven't drilled the 5mm holes in the plywood yet as I wanted to check everything. The end of the plywood needs shaping but not bothered about that. Next steps are: 1. Drill holes for the neck. 2. Print the bottom control panel bits so I can have something to hold the Telecaster control panels. 3. Print a small and simple pickguard to hold the neck pickup. 4. Solder (or wrap) the wires to see if it even works. 5. Work out how to se the intonation and such. 6. .... 7. Profit!

I think you're all missing that this might be an ultra rare Fender that's disguised as pile of junk. Who knows what treasures lie underneath that plain and humble facade? Now the cynics amongst you may dismiss this as mere babbling, but look at Antiques Roadshow as evidence that pearls do exist in unlikely corners. This could be a chance to acquire a lost relic of Leo himself. You could be kicking yourself when it turns up at Andy Baxters with a £50k price tag. Or not.