Not a bass. Tonewood yadda yadda yadda.

[Owen]

https://www.guitarworld.com/news/prusacaster-3d-printed-guitar

 

I could very happily take a bass version of one of these. 

[BigRedX]

If you read the description it's a Harley Benton Telecaster kit with part of the body replaced with 3D printer parts. Hardly very radical.

 

Even Odd Guitars who were doing this sort of thing in a much more interesting way over 10 years ago had a standard wooden neck and a wood body core from neck pocket to bridge. At the moment all the 3D printed bits are cosmetic rather than structural.

 

 

[Dad3353]

29 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

If you read the description it's a Harley Benton Telecaster kit with part of the body replaced with 3D printer parts. Hardly very radical.

 

Even Odd Guitars who were doing this sort of thing in a much more interesting way over 10 years ago had a standard wooden neck and a wood body core from neck pocket to bridge. At the moment all the 3D printed bits are cosmetic rather than structural.

 

The HB Tele body was not used, in fact. The body was assembled from several individually-printed parts, as explained more fully in the video. The result, whatever its pedigree, is quite convincing, and leaves each project open for folk to customise as they wish. 

[Owen]

It is the concept of 3D printing something for not much money which I can then populate with the contents of my parts drawer which I am finding very attractive. Up until a month ago I even had a spare 5 string neck lying around looking for a home. 

[BigRedX]

1 hour ago, Owen said:

It is the concept of 3D printing something for not much money which I can then populate with the contents of my parts drawer which I am finding very attractive. Up until a month ago I even had a spare 5 string neck lying around looking for a home. 

 

Do you have a suitably large 3D printer?

 

The one that is recommended in the blog/video costs just under £1k and while that can print a single piece big enough to go from the neck pocket to the end of the bridge on a guitar sized instrument, it looks as though it only just fits with a bit of lateral thinking. On a precision bass the distance from the neck pocket to the end of the bridge is approximately 40cm. There's no way that fits within the 25x21x21cm limit of that particular printer. That means a bigger 3D printer or you are back to using a wooden core for the main part of the body. Also there were problems with the structural integrity of core part. I suspect the larger part required for a bass is likely to be less stable.

 

The material works out at around £20 per colour per kg so that's at least £60 for the body of that particular instrument.

 

Also unless you have suitable 3D software and the skill to use it, you are going to be stuck with other people's designs. For me the whole point of being able to print a 3D would be the fact that I can have whatever I want. The application used to create the guitar body in the article costs over £500pa for a licence. Remember that every alteration to the body - even something as trivial is having to change the location of the screw holes - is going to require the ability to edit the 3D model, and you might need to do that for the guitar body that has been made available for free if Thomann change the specifications of any part of the Telecaster kit that it is based on.

 

There are of course places that will do the 3D printing for you, I had a look at a couple but they are all very coy about the actual costs, but I guesstimate you'll pay at least double what the raw materials cost (I'd be happy if someone can prove me wrong on that), so you're looking at over £100 for a guitar body made to someone else's design.

 

I'm sure that one day it will be easy and affordable. I don't think we're quite there yet.

[JoeEvans]

In this case it looks to me like 3d printing gets you something that you could make just as easily from a chunk of wood... And if you are able to prepare the data, you could get that chunk machined by a business with a CNC router for not too much money.

[LeftyJ]

[Ralf1e]

On 23/02/2023 at 21:46, Owen said:

https://www.guitarworld.com/news/prusacaster-3d-printed-guitar

 

I could very happily take a bass version of one of these. 

Some one owes Bees a lot of money for the intellectual property.

That bankrupts it before it starts🤣

[BigRedX]

On 23/02/2023 at 22:43, Dad3353 said:

The HB Tele body was not used, in fact. The body was assembled from several individually-printed parts, as explained more fully in the video. The result, whatever its pedigree, is quite convincing, and leaves each project open for folk to customise as they wish. 

 

Sorry for some reason I missed this when you posted originally. I stand corrected regarding the body. 

 

However as I noted in my reply to @Owen there were still structural issues with the first 3D print of core body part which required specialist knowledge of the 3D printing process and materials used to in order to address. I know you do 3D printing so did the fix make sense to you?

 

Also as I noted the degree of customisation available will depend on the end users access to and skill with 3D modelling programs. I suspect that most will simply download the files and print them. Not having done any 3D printing myself is the material to be used embedded within the "print" file or can the end user choose whatever they want?

Edited February 25, 2023 by BigRedX

[Owen]

On 24/02/2023 at 15:14, JoeEvans said:

In this case it looks to me like 3d printing gets you something that you could make just as easily from a chunk of wood... And if you are able to prepare the data, you could get that chunk machined by a business with a CNC router for not too much money.

As anyone who has interfaced with me on the build forum will know, I have ZERO skillset to prepare anything like this. I actually like the aesthetic of the mish-mash.

[Owen]

[Dad3353]

1 hour ago, BigRedX said:

... ^^ ^^ ^^

 

Whilst I wouldn't claim that the method and model presented in the video are the be-all and end-all of luthery, looking purely at the financial outlay and the end result, it looks, to me, to be a darned fine deal. The 'mystic' of 3D printing is soon dissolved once one has done a little, and that one's printer is a decent one (mine is an Alfawise U30, so far from 'top-end', but it does a fine job...). I'm sure that you're familiar with amateur silk-screen printing..? It's about the same learning curve, I'd say; a few spoilt tee-shirts and some runny ink, then it settles down to a certain routine. Without having looked at the details of the files offered, I see not major reason why anyone couldn't just bash 'em out; it's not rocket surgery, really. The PLA material used is very inexpensive, with the downside of not supporting high temperatures too well, so such an instrument left out in the sun could well become a Salvador Dali version. There are other materials, such as ABS, that would be fine, but they require a well-ventilated print-room, as they are not really lung-friendly.
Customisation would be a doddle to anyone using even basic 3D software such as Blender, and the honeycomb idea makes it even easier. If one wanted to go 'solid' (although most 3D prints are not fully solid, anyway...), it's no big deal. A mistake really only costs the time spent printing (it's not instant; pieces like that would take days to produce, not minutes...), so experimentation would not be a disaster. The material used is not embedded in the print file, which is really only concerned with the actual shape; the software coupled with the printer would decide exactly how to 'slice' the model, with the parameters that the operator would enter. I started out with zero knowledge; I'm certainly not expert now, but such a project daunts me not at all. I've successfully printed far more complex stuff, and anyone with half a grain of experience can do the same, I'm sure.
Hope this helps. 

Edited February 25, 2023 by Dad3353

[Burns-bass]

Surely this is all about the potential application of this? The designs are freely available and on the public domain. The technology is falling in price. Finally, it looks super cool!

 

Its easy to be negative about these things, but the impact could be transformative.

 

I’m working on a project with a global engineering business that are phasing out their network of parts stores and instead shifting to 3D printing. Local

engineers can download parts and print a valve part they can be fitted in days. At the moment it’s not possible, but soon will be and it will transform the speed they can deal with dangerous situations. (These are choke valves for energy use in oil and gas etc.)

[BigRedX]

@Dad3353 Thanks for the additional information regarding the 3D printing process. As an ex-printer myself, I don't really see the correlation, screen printing for me was always very hands-on and the "feedback" if something was going wrong was instant. If you want a 2D print analogy, IMO it is where the industry was 50 years ago with off-set litho printing, where it was relatively easy to get ink on the paper but getting really good consistent results that weren't full of hickeys, show-through, and mis-registration etc. took real skill on the part of the press operator (something I never really acquired despite the number of hours I spent at it).

 

I've done basic 3D modelling, mostly box and bag packaging visualisation which is fairly simple stuff, but I also used to work with this person who IMO is one of the masters of 3D modelling, so I know I have so much more to learn before I could even start to create something like the guitar in the OP. Over the last few days I've done quite a bit of reading up regarding 3D printing, and mostly what I've learned is that it is even more complicated than I originally thought. The slicing parameters (which I don't really understand yet) and the fact that you might need different materials that your 3D printer doesn't necessarily support are just two issue that I hadn't even thought of before I started digging deeper. I also looked at the prices of the carbon fibre based material that was recommended in the blog if you wanted a really good, structurally sound, heat resistant core; and you are looking at about £100 just for the core part (and that's if you can get it right first time). Also as soon as you want to print anything other than plastics and carbon-fibre based materials the cost of the machinery rises dramatically.

 

I think there is a mis-guided belief that because it's all done with machines and software that anyone with the machines and software can do it. I know for a fact in the 2D printing world that this simply isn't true, because if it was, I'd be out of job. Yes, it's easier than ever for someone with a good idea to be able to visualise it, but that doesn't mean that the idea will always properly translate into ink on paper without the intervention of people with the appropriate technical know-how, and of course you need a good idea in the first place. In the same way I'm sure lots of people having spent some time with 3D software could come up a basic guitar body design and 3D print it, but that doesn't necessarily mean that all the other parts will bolt properly to it, or that the guitar won't fold up under string tension on a hot day. That's where you need the technical knowledge and the time and money to do lots of experimentation.

 

I think the biggest issue I have is that so far all that has been demonstrated is that the simplest part of a solid electric guitar, the body, can be 3D printed by someone with the right 3D printer and technical know-how. When someone works out how to print a neck and fingerboard (including the frets) on a sub £1k 3D printer (for less than £100 worth of materials) than I'll have another look.

 

 

[BigRedX]

33 minutes ago, Burns-bass said:

Surely this is all about the potential application of this? The designs are freely available and on the public domain. The technology is falling in price. Finally, it looks super cool!

 

Its easy to be negative about these things, but the impact could be transformative.

 

I’m working on a project with a global engineering business that are phasing out their network of parts stores and instead shifting to 3D printing. Local

engineers can download parts and print a valve part they can be fitted in days. At the moment it’s not possible, but soon will be and it will transform the speed they can deal with dangerous situations. (These are choke valves for energy use in oil and gas etc.)

 

I'm not being negative, just realistic. 3D printing works fine for standard parts made out of the correct materials for the application.

 

However for me the whole point of being able to 3D print a guitar body is that I can have something unique to me and not simply another Telecaster clone with holes through in it, and which is entirely dependant upon Thomann not changing the specification of any of the donor parts. That means spending time learning the 3D modelling tools and learning about the properties of the various 3D printable materials, and even then a lot of expensive trial and error before I get something close to what I want.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to the day when I can 3D print a guitar to my own design for under £100. As I said earlier I don't think we're there yet.

[BigRedX]

On 25/02/2023 at 10:43, LeftyJ said:

 

I assume you have posted this because the prosthetic in this photo was made using 3D printed parts? However I doubt it would be possible on sub £1k 3D printer using materials that cost £20/kg. From what I have discovered over the last few days is that 3D printing is capable of many wonderful things, but almost anything really interesting requires access to very expensive equipment and a lot of additional technical know-how. Everything else seems to be the 3D equivalent of using clip-art to make your band poster. 

[LeftyJ]

2 hours ago, BigRedX said:

 

I assume you have posted this because the prosthetic in this photo was made using 3D printed parts? However I doubt it would be possible on sub £1k 3D printer using materials that cost £20/kg. From what I have discovered over the last few days is that 3D printing is capable of many wonderful things, but almost anything really interesting requires access to very expensive equipment and a lot of additional technical know-how. Everything else seems to be the 3D equivalent of using clip-art to make your band poster. 

Sorry, I should have elaborated more (or at all ). I just think the guitar in the opening post looks like a Jazzmaster with a few prosthetic limbs. Which isn't a problem in itself, but I think the various parts aren't exactly a visual match. I can understand that the creator had to work around the limitations of his 3D printing equipment, but they could have done a better job making it visually appealing. 

 

Like these guys: 

 

 

 

Imagine that with a woven graphite neck! 

Edited February 26, 2023 by LeftyJ

[Dad3353]

3 hours ago, BigRedX said:

...Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to the day when I can 3D print a guitar to my own design for under £100. As I said earlier I don't think we're there yet.

 

Start off by working on how to design for 3D, using whatever software you can afford (I use Blender, which is free; some software costs an arm and a leg each month...). The resulting design has to be in a format that 3D printers work with (typically STI; there are others...), and that the design is '3D-print friendly', which means that it is physically possible to create it by 'layering' slices of the chosen material one on t'other. It's easy to start off, for learning, and can cost nothing but one's time and patience (like many other skills...); one 'designs' a cube to start with, then rounds off the corners, punches holes through, chooses connection points etc... As I boldly stated, it's really not rocket surgery for anyone with a will to learn, and, whilst it's only 'on screen', wastes nothing.
Once one has a half-decent little project to be tested (not necessarily a complete guitar; just a test piece such as a small house, or a duck...), there are local 3D printers not far away that will print it, after testing its technical feasibility, for very little expenditure. When it comes to actually wanting to print out a complete body, there are 3D printers that work with almost any material required, including carbon, so no need to invest, oneself, in industrial plant. Start small and modest and it becomes much more 'doable'. You're probably right about a complete, fretted, neck, although I'm sure some hi-tech means are available now, but the day is fast approaching. Anyway, the first step will always be the ability to have the Idea, then create a printable file from the software, and anyone can do that, after putting in the effort.
Just sayin'. 

Edited February 26, 2023 by Dad3353

[BigRedX]

1 hour ago, LeftyJ said:

Sorry, I should have elaborated more (or at all ). I just think the guitar in the opening post looks like a Jazzmaster with a few prosthetic limbs. Which isn't a problem in itself, but I think the various parts aren't exactly a visual match. I can understand that the creator had to work around the limitations of his 3D printing equipment, but they could have done a better job making it visually appealing. 

 

Like these guys: 

 

 

 

Imagine that with a woven graphite neck! 

 

Interesting, although for me the guitar in the OP is visually slightly more pleasing (and I appreciate that this is completely subjective). 

 

What isn't as pleasing is the $499 price tag for that body which shows a lot of fairly nasty "finishing" marks around where the various pieces join and also what looks to me like printing errors on some the hexagon edges. This would be reasonably acceptable if I had downloaded the model for free and was outputting it on my 3D printer at home. However IMO it's not acceptable on something that is being offered for sale as a finished item, especially at that price. I also note that they are selling complete guitars with what looks like standard ready made necks for $999! The joint edges of the "flying V" are even nastier and if you zoom in on the photo you can see the layer structure of the printing. I'm assuming that this is a limitation of the current technology and for many applications where 3D printing is being used, these print artefacts are either irrelevant or at least acceptable. In this case I don't think that they are.

 

Right now 3D printing seems to win for prototyping or for custom and JIT manufacturing where functionality is more important than finish.

[BigRedX]

@Dad3353 I've downloaded Blender and will probably have a go with it the next time I need to do some simple 3D visualisation to ease myself in. However the first impressions aren't very favourable as the interface doesn't follow the Macintosh GUI guidelines, and while I can see from the manual that it supports multiple displays doing something as simple as moving the interface palettes onto a different one to allow more area for the workspace on the main display doesn't appear to work in the standard Mac way of doing things.

[SamIAm]

11 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

@Dad3353 I've downloaded Blender and will probably have a go with it the next time I need to do some simple 3D visualisation to ease myself in. However the first impressions aren't very favourable as the interface doesn't follow the Macintosh GUI guidelines, and while I can see from the manual that it supports multiple displays doing something as simple as moving the interface palettes onto a different one to allow more area for the workspace on the main display doesn't appear to work in the standard Mac way of doing things.

I never got on with Blender, I’ve found fusion 360 a lot better … quite a learning curve but works well on MacOS and with some constraints (eg 10 editable files) is free for personal use.

S’manth x

[Owen]

3 hours ago, LeftyJ said:

I just think the guitar in the opening post looks like a Jazzmaster with a few prosthetic limbs.

I am fully aware that the world is big enough for many people to find many different kinds of things attractive It is the modular nature of the original which works for me. It is unapologetically what it is.

[Dad3353]

1 hour ago, Smanth said:

I never got on with Blender, I’ve found fusion 360 a lot better … quite a learning curve but works well on MacOS and with some constraints (eg 10 editable files) is free for personal use.

S’manth x

 

I was doing fine with learning Fusion360 until they changed the conditions, and the Personal version is no longer useful for 3D printing, which was my prime usage. A shame; I might have bought it if their pricing was a bit more in budget, but the monthly outgoings were far too much.
As for the 'non-Mac' interface : I've had all sorts of OS over the decades, and just get on with adapting. I studied the Xerox GUI for a few years, and agree with many of its principles, but have a far more pragmatic attitude, going with Life's flow rather than getting tied to any one method. It was part of my career in any case, and so flexibility was an advantage I played upon. No regrets. 

[BigRedX]

For me a consistency of interface is one of the things that makes learning a new application so much easier. If all the interface elements work in the same way irrespective of the application. One of the great things about all the 2D graphics applications I use is that the palettes that provide all the information can be shifted onto a second screen simply by grabbing and moving them. That way I can save my main screen for the "work space" and all the information about the element I am manipulating at any one time is displayed across a range of "mini windows" on a separate one. So far, despite the fact that the screen grabs I have seen confirm that what I want to do is possible within Blender, I have been unable to persuade them to "undock" from the main window, or for that matter found any way of opening up the palette that allows numerical manipulation of the elements in the workspace. If the interface followed standard Macintosh guidelines, I'd have done this by now and could be getting on with learning the details of how the application works, instead of trying the persuade the interface to work in a way that I know is possible.

[Dad3353]

57 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

For me a consistency of interface is one of the things that makes learning a new application so much easier...

 

Any Blender window can be filled with whatever function is required, and split, either horizontally or vertically, so as to compose the view that's right for the circumstances. I can't speak for 'palettes' as such, as I mainly use the 3D functions, and colour things with UV textures, not 'paint' as such. Blender has many facets, and those that I use for 3D are quite different from those used, for example, by a sculptor, or photo-real artist. The GUI stays the same, however, so I could easily adapt another's set-up for my own usage. The mouse movements and keyboard shortcuts would be those I wish to use, and with a 'right-click' on any command, I can add it to an 'express' menu fro my most common function calls. For another project, I may well change these for a more suitable set. It's very flexible, not rigid at all. I doubt that Windows, Apple, GEM, Linux, Unix... whatever... could design a GUI that would be perfect for everyone's use in every situation without offering some form of personalised configuration. 'Horses for courses', and 'We're all different' and all that, of course. I had a look, and couldn't (rapidly...) find a 3D package that adheres to the Apple standard, either. A gap in the market, maybe..? 

Edited February 26, 2023 by Dad3353