rwillett

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.

Rumble by Link Wray. Saw Jimmy Page play it at the weekend (sadly not in person) and realised I knew the song from am advert. Yep, that's embarrassing. I now know it was banned even though it was an instrumental which is pretty impressive. Rob

And after a lot of work, I almost have a model that works. Its taken longer to work out the mass of fixing holes to connect it up than the original design. There are far, far too many bolt holes here, but the only way to know is to put too many in and then take them out and see how many are actually needed. This is 10mm down from the surface where a lot of bolt holes are, but there's just as many 10mm up from the other side. If I had a printer that was three times bigger, I could almost print this as one piece, but I don't so I can't. The advantage of this approach is that it's modular. Its relatively trivial to put a different neck on this as only one piece needs to change. Want three humbuckers, not that difficult as thats a relatively simple wiring and pickgiard change. Not convinced the control panel is big enough, BUT thats just another module. You could change the two end pieces and make it a Gibson SG like shape. Anyway, still need to check things now and thats another day or so as I have to check every hole to see if its consistent throughout.

I'm closer to it's date of birth than you.... Not sure I can afford it though. Rob

I tried to find something here and never got this. Well done.

Roterhead The Minkees The Leech Boys The Slash Dildo (technically not in the rules but I feel its in spirit) Walking Heads Blue Oyster Cult. Left that as is as the bad word elf's would censor it. Mark Colon from T-Rex

Thanks all for these. I've had a rubbish day so far and these have made me laugh.

@Andyjr1515 Thank you for the comprehensive description. Thats a great explanation of why cross grain wood plugs are important for load bearing. I also know that there is a website dedicated to wood plugs, https://plugitwood.co.uk/ I suspect the wood is rather important in Google Search here I've just inspected the end of the neck again, and what appeared to be a right mess for the top two holes, aren't as bad as I thought. There's only a mmm or two of damage. It looked worse than I thought. So my plans are: 1. I will try normal guitar neck screws, preferably with a ferrule to spread the load. Failing that .... 2. .. I'll move to threaded inserts, which I think I can do. Failing that (and by this time I expect to have lost a finger or two) .... 3. .. I'll buy some end grain plugs from the website above and try and glue them in and move back to stage 1. 4. .. Give up.

If you can find a model, that's the easiest. It's trivial design if I have all the dimensions and I mean every dimension down to the inside radii. Need hole size, height, internal size, external size, screw hole position etc etc etc It's easier with a model. Send me a link if you can

I'll print it for you and bang it in the post. It's no big deal. What exactly do you want to print though?

I built a CNC machine using a 3d printer. I enjoyed the 3d printing more than using the CNC machine. I did start writing my own software to drive it, as the CNC design software was a pain. I did give up though. I donated it and all the kit to the local school around a year ago.

A bit more progress. Have managed to work out how to drill the neck inserts in so I don't destroy the neck and accidently set off WWIII. One the side effects of that, is that I now have the right size for the neck heal module AND the bolt hole positions. So am running this test print off at 60% infill as this module needs to be as stiff as possible (cue @SpondonBassed and all Viz readers). This is not the complete component but I've cut it down just to check everything fits. To my mind the heel pocket is probably the most important bit of the guitar after the fredboard, though this is based purely on my guess @Andyjr1515 might well correct me here. Also have cut the backbone out of 15mm plywood. Despite my best efforts, whilst I managed to get a nice clean cut, one end of the ply is 86.6mm wide and the other is 88.3mm wide. So I can draw a straight line but I can't get a consistent width. I need someone with a table saw to make accurate cuts. In the interim, I'll use the plywoord as the load is along the length of the ply from the string tension, rather than the width. The plywood backbone would slot into a rebate on the back of each module and then I would anchor the plywood to each module with four screws per module. Not sure if this is a big problem or not. Will need to ponder it. You can see how it fits here, the neck pickup module went bang a few versions ago and I haven't fixed it This is without the backbone and this is with the plywood backbone. Rob

Whilst this is a very accurate statement, when taken slightly out of context, it sounds very odd. Well done that man for having an even smuttier mind than me Rob