A 3d printed six string....

[Stub Mandrel]

1 minute ago, rwillett said:

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

 

Any designers out there who can advise?

Run it around the bridge and the end of the neck. At the bridge round the corners, at the neck follow the profile if the edges of the body.

[Owen]

Could you print it in black and white incorporating the shapes the main body's holes are?

[rwillett]

20 minutes ago, Stub Mandrel said:

Run it around the bridge and the end of the neck. At the bridge round the corners, at the neck follow the profile if the edges of the body.

That might work. I could redesign the neck heal and the bridge to have more mounting holes for the pickguard. 

 

7 minutes ago, Owen said:

Could you print it in black and white incorporating the shapes the main body's holes are?

Not sure what that would look like. Could you expand please?

 

Thanks

 

Rob

[SamIAm]

I would extend up along either side of the neck and down alongside the bridge and (If you can) sculpt the side to echo the body, a bit like this crude graphic but with smoother transitions.

Sam x

[rwillett]

That might work

[Owen]

1 hour ago, rwillett said:

Not sure what that would look like. Could you expand please?

 

Thanks

 

Rob

As I was writing that, I knew it was woolly. You could mirror the shapes of the cutouts of the body in black on a white pickguard.  Or, another idea would be to look at the black lines in the body and extend them "across" the pickguard. If that makes sense.

[rwillett]

@Owen

 

I'll look at that as well as @SamIAm's idea

 

Thanks

Rob

[rwillett]

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 finally got around to doing a simple test for doing multiple colours with a single extruder.

 

 

This is a white box in a blackbox. I had forgotten how tedious this is. Every layer has to have two colour changes, from one colour to the next and then back again. Doing eight layers took 25 mins. I got bored and gave up

 

This is doable but its hard work. @Owen has suggested a black and white colour scheme and I do like the idea of carrying the Vertoroni shapes through to the pickguard. Its easy to design but it's very, very, very slow to print as there are so many manual colour changes. I think it will take about 8x as long and I have to watch it all the time.

 

Anyway I learnt a lot here

 

Thanks

Rob

[Kommi]

I was curious if you had any intention of publishing the files and a BOM for this guitar, it would be a pretty fun project. 

[rwillett]

6 hours ago, Kommi said:

I was curious if you had any intention of publishing the files and a BOM for this guitar, it would be a pretty fun project. 

Hi

 

Strange definition of "fun" I hadn't seen before

 

The original work for this started with a Prusacaster (https://blog.prusa3d.com/the-prusacaster-how-to-design-and-3d-print-an-electric-guitar_71962/). I built that using an Ender 3 Pro 3d printer. I can't remember the neck I used but contrary to what the reviews said, it wasn't a very good guitar. Its bulky, quite awkward to use and I thought I could do better.

 

The last version is a very long way from that Prusacaster and has nothing in common with it, possibly apart from a bridge. This is (I think) the sixth version. I could have brought a genuine 62 Strat if I put my own time in as a cost

 

To build the latest version requires:

 

1. A pillar drill. There's a quite a lot of aluminium inside and on the back of the six string. It requires quite a lot of either drilling and then tapping screw holes in OR using industrial adhesives to bond aluminium together. The adhesives are not fun to play with. Drilling and tapping aluminium is easier but hard work. A hand drill is not accurate enough.

2. You need to be able to cut and shape aluminium to get the cut aways, so a finger file tool is helpful. You could do it by hand but thats a lot of work.

3. You need to make a lot of tools to get the drilling right OR to hold the aluminium in the right place if bonding.

4. You need quite a few clamps to hold things in place for glueing the body together.

5. There are a range of screws, from M2.5's for the back plates to a section of M3's of different lengths and different heads. I have two screw boxes each with 20 compartments of just M3 bolts. Button headed, countersunk, black, silver, cheese headed and so on of different lengths.

6. You need to be able to design a pickguard as they are specific to the pickups.  You need to choose pickups.

7. You need to design and solder a wiring loom.

8. You need to be able to use a slicer to create negative volumes for printing (this makes sure there are voids) and to pause printing to add in a number of M3 square nuts. Octoprint is a help here. You also need to create different printing infills for different parts of the model.

9. You need to design the neck module to hold the neck in the right place, I have always brought second hand (and decent) necks but every one is different, so I have a 3d scanner to scan the neck to get it right.

10. You need a glue that will weld the plastic together. In the UK I use FloPlast, not sure where you are.

11. You need to be able to properly use Fusion360 as that's where all the files are.

12. You need copper tape.

 

The actual printing isn't too bad. It's around 70-100 hours depending on your printer, a modern printer will do it quicker, such as a Prusa Mk4.

 

I have thought about doing a BOM and releasing the files but I cannot support it and I know from bitter experience releasing free software, I had loads of people wanting help or changes, and I simply have no time to do that. Simple things like their bridge has different screw holes to my bridge, how do they change it in Fusion 360? Perhaps FloPlast isn't available in the UK, can they use brand X or brand Y glue? I use metric screws for everything, in the USA, metric screws are less popular than imperial, so can they use a 1/8" as opposed to an M3. Can they even buy an M3 square nut in the USA? How do they align the neck properly, I made a laser guider to check its correct, why did I do that? Because I made a mistake in the measurement, cut and drilled aluminium and was out by a mm. Learnt my lesson the hard way as I threw about 2-3 days of work away.

 

Nothing in the above is difficult to do in isolation, it's a lot to do if you've never printed a guitar before.

 

If you really want to print it, I'll help you do it, with no issues from me, but I don't have the time to put the files up and show people how to make it and make a BOM out of it all.

 

Thanks
Rob

[SpondonBassed]

12 hours ago, Kommi said:

BOM

 

Bill Of Materials?

 

Welcome to the forum K.

[Kommi]

17 hours ago, rwillett said:

Hi

 

Strange definition of "fun" I hadn't seen before

 

The original work for this started with a Prusacaster (https://blog.prusa3d.com/the-prusacaster-how-to-design-and-3d-print-an-electric-guitar_71962/). I built that using an Ender 3 Pro 3d printer. I can't remember the neck I used but contrary to what the reviews said, it wasn't a very good guitar. Its bulky, quite awkward to use and I thought I could do better.

 

The last version is a very long way from that Prusacaster and has nothing in common with it, possibly apart from a bridge. This is (I think) the sixth version. I could have brought a genuine 62 Strat if I put my own time in as a cost

 

To build the latest version requires:

 

1. A pillar drill. There's a quite a lot of aluminium inside and on the back of the six string. It requires quite a lot of either drilling and then tapping screw holes in OR using industrial adhesives to bond aluminium together. The adhesives are not fun to play with. Drilling and tapping aluminium is easier but hard work. A hand drill is not accurate enough.

2. You need to be able to cut and shape aluminium to get the cut aways, so a finger file tool is helpful. You could do it by hand but thats a lot of work.

3. You need to make a lot of tools to get the drilling right OR to hold the aluminium in the right place if bonding.

4. You need quite a few clamps to hold things in place for glueing the body together.

5. There are a range of screws, from M2.5's for the back plates to a section of M3's of different lengths and different heads. I have two screw boxes each with 20 compartments of just M3 bolts. Button headed, countersunk, black, silver, cheese headed and so on of different lengths.

6. You need to be able to design a pickguard as they are specific to the pickups.  You need to choose pickups.

7. You need to design and solder a wiring loom.

8. You need to be able to use a slicer to create negative volumes for printing (this makes sure there are voids) and to pause printing to add in a number of M3 square nuts. Octoprint is a help here. You also need to create different printing infills for different parts of the model.

9. You need to design the neck module to hold the neck in the right place, I have always brought second hand (and decent) necks but every one is different, so I have a 3d scanner to scan the neck to get it right.

10. You need a glue that will weld the plastic together. In the UK I use FloPlast, not sure where you are.

11. You need to be able to properly use Fusion360 as that's where all the files are.

12. You need copper tape.

 

The actual printing isn't too bad. It's around 70-100 hours depending on your printer, a modern printer will do it quicker, such as a Prusa Mk4.

 

I have thought about doing a BOM and releasing the files but I cannot support it and I know from bitter experience releasing free software, I had loads of people wanting help or changes, and I simply have no time to do that. Simple things like their bridge has different screw holes to my bridge, how do they change it in Fusion 360? Perhaps FloPlast isn't available in the UK, can they use brand X or brand Y glue? I use metric screws for everything, in the USA, metric screws are less popular than imperial, so can they use a 1/8" as opposed to an M3. Can they even buy an M3 square nut in the USA? How do they align the neck properly, I made a laser guider to check its correct, why did I do that? Because I made a mistake in the measurement, cut and drilled aluminium and was out by a mm. Learnt my lesson the hard way as I threw about 2-3 days of work away.

 

Nothing in the above is difficult to do in isolation, it's a lot to do if you've never printed a guitar before.

 

If you really want to print it, I'll help you do it, with no issues from me, but I don't have the time to put the files up and show people how to make it and make a BOM out of it all.

 

Thanks
Rob

 

 

Definitely interested in printing it. My biggest concern honestly was the neck, as aside from the pickups and neck, I actually have all the tools and such needed. Just need to bother a friend to help me cut the aluminum if my table saw can't handle it. Also, thanks for the floplast suggestion, been trying to find something to adhere PLA since I've started on this titanic Event Horizon build. This would honestly be my first guitar build, since i'm getting back into music. Might build a Prusacaster first to get a feel for it before I go whole hog on this monster, I just have a high appetite for punishment, so planning this out seems like a ton of fun. 

 

And yeah, I fully understand supporting things unfortunately. I help with a few 3d printing communities and electric biking, and unfortunately some people can be aggressively dumb. 

Edited March 21 by Kommi

[rwillett]

Building the Prusacaster first will give you an idea of what you want to do. They use Telecaster bits so it's quite easy to get the parts you need.

 

I used decent plywood as the backbone as I had that easily available. Plywood is easily shaped with hand tools as well. 

 

Once you've built that, then see where you want to go. 

 

Rob