3D PRINTED GUITAR

THE PROJECT

3D PRINTING A GUITAR The main challenge with 3D printing a guitar is rigidity. The strings are under a lot of tension which can snap/warp the plastic. Since my 3D printer is only so big, I was limited to printing the body in sections. I chose to make the middle, load bearing, of which the strongest and with the most material so that I could have a funky fan-like design for the rest.
	RIGIDITY ISSUES After it was all printed, the guitar did start to warp over time despite my using a dense gyroscopic infill for the middle section. To solve this, I exploited the fact that the gyriod infill leaves no closed regions in the body. I drilled a hole in the back and injected it with first some leftover expoxy resin around the next, then some plaster of paris (with 10% PVA glue mixed in) to fill up the rest. After doing this the body has not warped any more and is now more dense which results in better sound quality.
ELECTRONICS I wired up the guitar based on a stratocaster 1960s design. I also decided to build my own pickups from scratch which was a challenge. Starting with magnets held in place by a 3d printed bracket, I wound ultra fine enamelled copper wire about 7000 times around it using a winding setup I made from a filament holder and a pc fan. The pickups ended up sounding surprisingly good, I belive due to the somewhat messy winding compared to proper uniform machine wound ones which gives it more character.