rwillett

Wow, a Personal Assistant, can I ask them to help sort my work life out whilst taking a break from sorting yours? I do need help

If anybody is coming to the Bass Bash this weekend and wants some rolls and doesn't have Prime, I can order some and bring them down with me. It's only available in Red but at £5 a roll, it's cheap as chips. I might order more today anyway. Rob

Ah! That might explain it. It's a very good deal if you do a lot of printing, however joining Amazon Prime isn't cheap. £5 a roll is excellent value. Sorry about that.

Just in case anybody is still following this thread, Amazon are knocking out esun Fire Engine Red PLA+ at around £5 a kg if you buy a pack of four. Just brought sixteen rolls at that price. I suspect it's a glitch as every other roll is 2.5x higher. https://amzn.eu/d/4FvltQb Rob

Just checking they weren't my effects pedals you were chucking in....

So here's where we get all geeky... @Stub Mandrel will understand this though Yes, already looked at that. Fuzzy skin is great for non-horizontal walls but it can't go on the bottom and on the top of flat surfaces. For example, here's the top left part of a six string, this is a Prusa Mk4 printer so it's 250mm x 220mm printing area. This is in Prusaslicer After setting to fuzzy skin I get this, I've zoomed into a smaller section. The vertical shells are actually quite good with fuzzy skin, but the top flat section (Middle Left) and the top slightly curved section with all the ridges doesn't work with fuzzy skin. If you can make the model far more non horizontal it works OK. I believe that Oraslicer is more advanced than Prusaslicer here but I know Prusaslicer and it's set up with Fusion and Octoprint. However the major issue here is that I don't have a printer than can print a body in one go, so it still has to be joined together. I've resolved joining accurately, I use centuries old techniques of dowels and pins and it works fine. However there is still a join line that fuzzy skin actually highlights as it has this nice random texture and then suddenly a a rather sharp vertical join line. If I was making tool handles or knobs then fuzzy skins is quite nice, but didn't work for this. I also have looked at very large scale printers and seeing if they can scale up. RatRig and I have exchanged comms and I've asked about a slightly bigger printer than they actually sell. They make a lot of fuss over their customisation abilities, but they were not keen at all on making the X and Y bigger than 500mm. They were happy to scale in the Z (that's the vertical) but not so happy in X and Y as it would need a new frame, heater pad, bed plate, mag sheet etc etc etc. They make a point of their flexibility and if they can't do it, I can't build one any better. I'm not disheartened, I'll get a better looking bass and guitar one day, every iteration is a positive step forward (normally), so even steps backward are good as I know not to go there.. If I don't blow myself up with the next batch of chemicals I mix up, I'll be happy. I will need to build a proper spray booth though, with a decent extractor fan. Some of this stuff is not nice on the lungs. I suppose I could get my scuba gear out, but I'd be looking like a complete tw1t (or something) wearing a reg, a bottle whilst spraying stuff. The neighbours are already talking Rob

Brought a small Laney amp from Kim. Absolute pleasure to work with. Less than zero issues as he went well beyond what I would have hoped and expected from him. A true gent and the next time I'm New Cross way I'll happily buy him a coffee.

Mmmm....

Is there a raffle or is it swap shop or something else? Happy to bring something down to be raffled off. I suppose a stroppy nineteen year old is off-limits? Two smelly and feral cats? A dodgy Scotsman? All suggestions welcomed. Thanks Rob

I'll get there. The aim is to make a bass or guitar that looks and plays like a decent guitar. As you say, 3d printing is great for some things, it does allow designs like this, that you can't easily do with wood. They also sound pretty good. I'm sure a Fender aficionado would complain its not as good as their 62 or 72 or 82 Jazz but they have other advantages. left handed is easy, changes to accommodate different sizes is fairly easy. The metal work is not too bad now, it's about 90 mins depending on how much I have to cut through. The end build is strong, I was a little surprised that joining bits together works so well, so that's an issue resolved. The next one is the finish, and thats where its been a bit hard. Given some of the chemicals I've brought, I'm fully expecting a visit from the boys in blue asking whats going on I've yet to buy 2.5 tonnes of ammonium nitrate though so that might work in my favour. Thanks Rob

This is my normal modus operandi. Perhaps I'm ill and have been for some time (like 40+ years).

And it's all gone wrong. 😩 The primary aim of this build was to get a better finish on the body. As its 3d printed you get little layer lines and large join lines. The layer lines are caused by building the body up in layers between 0.1mm and 0.2mm high. The thinner the line, the longer it takes. Currently all the bits take around 36 hours to print. As nobody makes a large enough decent printer to do a bass body in a single pass, it has to be made in sections and joined. If anybody thinks RatRig does one, they don't. Had a number of discussions with them and they were not hopeful. So the intention of this build was to focus on finishing quality. I've been experimenting with various finishes and one that I thought might work hasn't really and so the body I made looks bad so back to the drawing board. I'll use the opportunity to try out a different build method so that if things do go wrong, I won't lose the whole body next time. One step forward, half a step back. Rob

I'd buy that... Wonder how much it costs to run. Glow plugs are a bit small so should be cheap

I wouldn't feel right if anybody else took the financial risk of buying them, so I'm happy to lead and buy the first 50 or so. Once we've lowered the price, by all means lean in. Rob

One solution to this would be to sell your older Fenders at a very, very low price to drive the prices down to counteract the cartel pushing them up. As a service to this community, I'm very happy to buy them at this low price. Feel free to contact me. Rob

Thats fine.

David Apologies I didn't send this. Wrote it but didn't press the button That's very kind of you. We'll make it fit one way or a other. Rob

I now have five days to complete the bass, I've had to go to London twice in the last seven days so progress was limited. Today's activity is to file the aluminium backbone and floor to fit. I've cut it approximately down to around 2-3mm too big and now ill use the finger grinder and a file to make it better. The red parts below are all sacrificial and to make sure it all fits. All the drilling (bar four countersunk holes for the neck bolts on the bottom) and tapping is done. The top aluminium still has it's protective cover on. Once shaped, I'll polish it to an inch (or 25.4mm) of its life. Body sides are more or less done but need some filling, sanding and then priming, sanding, priming, sanding, painting, more painting, yet more painting and then quick drying lacquer. That might be tight Rob

Brought a couple of cables. No issues, look great, looking forward to now sounding and playing like Jaco.... Rob

The Pirate Midi Polar Max is based on this open source project https://github.com/Builty/TonexOneController/tree/main I thought I'd seen something similar to this. 10% of sales go to the person who manages the code, which is good. If you wanted to save money, you could (if you were so inclined): Buy this https://github.com/Builty/TonexOneController/blob/main/HardwarePlatform_Waveshare4.3B.md Buy 2-16 pedal switches plus this board https://www.sparkfun.com/sparkfun-16-output-i-o-expander-breakout-sx1509.html Buy this for Midi https://www.amazon.com/HiLetgo-Reciprocal-Hardware-Automatic-Converter/dp/B082Y19KV9 Build yourself a case Download the firmware and test it works though I'm not sure how much money you'd save TBH as all of this takes time and I would value my time at more than it costs to build this, but it's neat and you can still plug in extra pedal switches such as the Chocolate. I did have one question for any Chocolate owners, I didn't think that the Chocolate supported switching through pressing C & D together. I will have to look again and perhaps there is a firmware upgrade. Rob

I have no issues with companies doing business, but when they try to extract every last penny from you, it starts to grate. A bit like Ryan Air when they floated the idea of charging £1 to use the toilets, or BMW (was it BMW?) now building cars with heated seats in to all their cars but you pay for them on a monthly subscription. BMW's view is that you can always choose if you want heated seats and not pay for them if not, but the cost of making the car is already incurred, they are now trying to to extract out a monthly or annual charge for a heated seat. So I could have brought the car outright, but still paying five years later to have a warm bum. Thankfully, most car companies have little idea of real security and somebody will hack into the system and charge you a £100 for a lifetime of warm buttocks. Sometimes it's a fine line between what is acceptable to me and not, other people will have their own views. Rob

Thats the business model for IK Media. Always find a way to get consumers to pay more and more.

It's a tough crowd here.

Thank you. Hangs head in embarrassment and quietly shuffles off to the corner.

What's a CAR please?