A 3d printed six string....

[rwillett]

Ah, now I understand what you mean. That's pretty simple to do. The video is around 75% TinkerCad and 25% Prusaslicer. It's a lot easier doing what he was doing in TinkerCad in Fusion 360. Once it's in F360, a lot of his alignment in PrusaSlicer goes away as well. He had a very laborious way of alignment and setting things up.

 

However all said and done, he did make a nice phone case, I hadn't thought of changing the infill at different heights to get the flexibility. I'm normally trying to make things as rigid as possible so that was a good idea.  The downside to this is that constantly changing the filament is painfully slow with a MMU (Multi Material Unit) as it's manual. Until recently Prusa's MMU was seen as a joke, an expensive joke, the new MMU might be a lot better. However doing a large number of filament changes makes the printing very slow. I have an issue that where I have my two printers, doesn;t allow enough space for the MMU as it takes a lot of space up as well.

 

None of this is that difficult, I might do a Union Jack this weekend to check what I thought was right is actually right. I also happen to have red, white and blue filaments close to hand and open

 

If it spurs some ideas for you thats great.

 

Thanks for sharing the video

 

Rob

[SpondonBassed]

26 minutes ago, rwillett said:

If it spurs some ideas for you thats great.

 

It certainly does and it definitely is.  Cheers!

[rwillett]

Let me know if I can help.

 

Rob

[tauzero]

9 hours ago, rwillett said:

I did look at doing this when I built a CNC machine around four years ago. It made a bit more sense then as I built an enclosure so it was a little safer. Emphasis on little. I decided that even a low powered one was too dangerous around me. 

 

Do you still have the CNC machine? That would be another way of cutting out a pickguard.

 

Despite angle grinders being my favourite tool, I don't think they'd be ideally suited to the task.

[rwillett]

The CNC was donated to the local school who were very pleased to get it. It had a bed area of around 800x600mm. I had a mad idea of doing bespoke cut foam inserts for tool drawers which didn't pan out. I brought an Ender 3 Pro to make the CNC and I quite liked the printing side. I do sell 3d printed bespoke astrophotography parts as a side business. I note I still have to work in IT to pay the bills 😊

 

The CNC might well have worked. Fastening the pickguard material down might be an issue but the curves would have been OK as the CNC was controlled by a similar mechanism as a 3d printer. No vacuum pumps to pull it down. Probably would have needed to work out how to lead the routing tool in but that's details. It did make so much noise I needed decent ear muffs. 

 

Rob

[SpondonBassed]

12 minutes ago, rwillett said:

I do sell 3d printed bespoke astrophotography parts as a side business.

 

@Stub Mandrel

 

Do you know about this?

[rwillett]

Here's a picture of the CNC machine

 

 

Took six months to build during lock down. The dust extraction system was my design. It took a lot of space up in the garage so it went to the school as-is.

 

Rob

[SpondonBassed]

6 minutes ago, rwillett said:

Here's a picture of the CNC machine

 

 

Took six months to build during lock down. The dust extraction system was my design. It took a lot of space up in the garage so it went to the school as-is.

 

Rob

 

Nice one.

 

I was involved with manufacturing these for a short while.  With what I learned, I'd source a second hand pool table and base the build on top of that if I were to make another one.

 

Ideal for mass production of small parts or larger one off projects.  The ones we made were hefty enough to machine aluminium billet.

[SamIAm]

15 minutes ago, rwillett said:

Here's a picture of the CNC machine

 

 

Took six months to build during lock down. The dust extraction system was my design. It took a lot of space up in the garage so it went to the school as-is.

 

Rob

Amazing!  There is no end to your innovation!

Sam x

[rwillett]

4 minutes ago, SpondonBassed said:

 

Nice one.

 

I was involved with manufacturing these for a short while.  With what I learned, I'd source a second hand pool table and base the build on top of that if I were to make another one.

 

Ideal for mass production of small parts or larger one off projects.  The ones we made were hefty enough to machine aluminium billet.

 

I think a pool table base would be excellent. It was fun building it, wiring it though was a nightmare as it had something like a 100m of wire for end stops and motors going through the tubes.

 

I learnt a lot, mainly not to build another one

 

Mine would not machine aluminium billet, well it would, but at approx 0.1mm per day. Rubbing the aluminium with wet tissue paper would be quicker. It was fine on ply and softwood. I started writing a 2.5D design package for it as the ones for CNC stuff were either eye wateringly expensive or crap. I'd got as far as working out all the cut paths before I had an outbreak on sanity and realised it was a mad idea.I had quite a lot of code written but still had a long way to go. 2.5D design code is hard, 3d is even harder

 

Rob

 

[rwillett]

5 minutes ago, SamIAm said:

Amazing!  There is no end to your innovation!

Sam x

That was a very deep rabbit hole, a quite expensive rabbit hole in both time and money. Not doing that again. Printing a guitar or bass is positively sensible compared to that.

 

Rob

[SpondonBassed]

8 minutes ago, rwillett said:

I started writing a 2.5D design package for it as the ones for CNC stuff were either eye wateringly expensive or crap.

 

I could not get on with the interface on ours.  It worked well, it was just that I didn't find anything intuitive about it.  I hope the GUI is better on today's software.

[rwillett]

13 minutes ago, SpondonBassed said:

 

I could not get on with the interface on ours.  It worked well, it was just that I didn't find anything intuitive about it.  I hope the GUI is better on today's software.

 

I looked at a few packages and they were very expensive and I was rapidly coming to the conclusion that it wasn't for me.

[rwillett]

I mentioned earlier I was building a pedalboard and in my arrogance I thought I'd make it without Velcro. Well after a couple of hours of trying to design a method of clamping pedals to the board, I have up and ordered Velcro. Oh well pride comes before a fall. Rather than clutter this thread up, see below.

 

 

[Stub Mandrel]

On 19/10/2024 at 07:26, Richard R said:

A desktop only web site that doesn't work on a phone.  How quaint. 

 

What more could you expect from the company who's aesthetic* combines bass guitars with "intimate toys"?

 

*I  use the word advisedly.

[Stub Mandrel]

On 19/10/2024 at 14:15, rwillett said:

Ah, now I understand what you mean. That's pretty simple to do. The video is around 75% TinkerCad and 25% Prusaslicer. It's a lot easier doing what he was doing in TinkerCad in Fusion 360. Once it's in F360, a lot of his alignment in PrusaSlicer goes away as well. He had a very laborious way of alignment and setting things up.

 

However all said and done, he did make a nice phone case, I hadn't thought of changing the infill at different heights to get the flexibility. I'm normally trying to make things as rigid as possible so that was a good idea.  The downside to this is that constantly changing the filament is painfully slow with a MMU (Multi Material Unit) as it's manual. Until recently Prusa's MMU was seen as a joke, an expensive joke, the new MMU might be a lot better. However doing a large number of filament changes makes the printing very slow. I have an issue that where I have my two printers, doesn;t allow enough space for the MMU as it takes a lot of space up as well.

 

None of this is that difficult, I might do a Union Jack this weekend to check what I thought was right is actually right. I also happen to have red, white and blue filaments close to hand and open

 

If it spurs some ideas for you thats great.

 

Thanks for sharing the video

 

Rob

 

I understand that Creality have launched a printer using four reels of pla to print up to 16 colours, presumably by mixing them in some sort of combination extruder. I guess four striking colours and twelve muddy grey-browns...

[Stub Mandrel]

On 19/10/2024 at 16:48, SpondonBassed said:

 

@Stub Mandrel

 

Do you know about this?

 

No I’m interested to see more.

 

I have a design for a scope with a crayford focuser on Thingiverse.com

[Stub Mandrel]

On 19/10/2024 at 18:58, rwillett said:

 

I think a pool table base would be excellent. It was fun building it, wiring it though was a nightmare as it had something like a 100m of wire for end stops and motors going through the tubes.

 

I learnt a lot, mainly not to build another one

 

Mine would not machine aluminium billet, well it would, but at approx 0.1mm per day. Rubbing the aluminium with wet tissue paper would be quicker. It was fine on ply and softwood. I started writing a 2.5D design package for it as the ones for CNC stuff were either eye wateringly expensive or crap. I'd got as far as working out all the cut paths before I had an outbreak on sanity and realised it was a mad idea.I had quite a lot of code written but still had a long way to go. 2.5D design code is hard, 3d is even harder

 

Rob

 

 

Have you tried Mach3. I know several people who use it.

[tauzero]

On 19/10/2024 at 07:26, Richard R said:

A desktop only web site that doesn't work on a phone.  How quaint. 

 

You probably shouldn't look at the HTML. Proper 20th century. We don't need no steenkin' CSS.

[rwillett]

On 20/10/2024 at 23:01, Stub Mandrel said:

 

Have you tried Mach3. I know several people who use it.

Apologies, I thought I'd replied and said I'd looked at Mach 3 and for some reason it wasn't an option. I have a feeling that it didn't work with the controller hardware I had. 

 

Rob

[rwillett]

On 20/10/2024 at 23:00, Stub Mandrel said:

 

No I’m interested to see more.

 

I have a design for a scope with a crayford focuser on Thingiverse.com

I also print stuff for astrophotography. Tube rings and holders for Raspberry Pi's. If you are interested ping me and I'll send you a link. 

 

I did make a Crayford focussor but it wouldn't take the weight with a camera so went with Starlight Instruments for my TMB, Brandon and Borg. 

 

Rob

[LukeFRC]

4 hours ago, tauzero said:

 

You probably shouldn't look at the HTML. Proper 20th century. We don't need no steenkin' CSS.

that was actually nostalgic to look at!  

[rwillett]

Had to play with making my own pickguard this morning. Mixed results.

 

I printed out a template to use a Dremel table router. Pretty normal stuff and I thought that this would be ideal (famous last words). I even marked it to make sure what was top and bottom never underestimate my ability to cock things up.

 

 

I then put masking tape on both sides of my pick guard material to protect it and drew around my template to get a rough idea to cut out something bigger which I could then route down.

 

 

The masking tape was useful as it allowed me to mark the outline.

 

 

Put it on the Dremel table router and then created a massive mess. A Dremel on this particular material creates tiny particles that are nightmare to get off your clothes.

 

 

This was a rough cut to give me a piece of material for routing around. The pickguard material was around 400mm wide and too unwieldy to handle.

 

Once it was cut down, I used two sided tape to hold the template down and then used the template to route around. Simple idea BUT the top of the router bit was rotating so fast it was melting into the PETG template and so it was difficult to get a straight edge. What would have been better would have been a bearing on the top so that router bit rotated but the template didn't melt. A 3d printed template is easy but not the right solution. I don't know what the right solution is at the moment....

 

Anyway, I took a file to the pickguard to level it out and get it looking better. Not that happy with it, Its better than the previous orange pickguard but its not at the quality I would like. Also its rather square so might put some significant radii on the corners. The other option is to get a black pearl pickguard. Suggestions welcome as to what to do.

 

I put the new pickguard on the guitar as it was better than that what I had, so its temporary until I work it out. I also took the opportunity to put the strap buttons on, take the ferrules off the back to clean that up, replace the solver screws with black ones to hide them. I then plugged it into an amp and had a play. Its not been set up properly, but it sounds pretty good. A lot warmer than my Telecaster, but put some significant gain on it and it breaks up nicely.

 

 

[Stub Mandrel]

Looking classy

[rwillett]

Thanks but I'm still not very happy with the pickguard. It looks very square and boxy. I'm not a designer and not sure what to do.

 

I have worked out what to do with the Dremel router table. Sell it back on eBay and buy a proper table and use proper router bits with bearings. Then I can print templates and get them looking better. 

 

However that still doesn't get round the issue the pickguard looks poor 😩

 

Any designers out there who can advise?

 

Thx

 

Rob