3dprint

Design fail or iteration?

- tvollaro

I have been working since last summer on a cigar box electric guitar, similar to this one on Instructables, but a Telecaster version. I successfully designed, printed, and assembled a three part neck with a truss rod hole. I finally just got around to assembling the electronics and cigar box body last weekend. Everything looked beautiful until I strung the first string… <head slap!> I must have mis-measured the bridge location, so the string hangs off the edge by about 1mm. I cannot simply move the bridge because I had already cut the hole for the pickup! Although I am disappointed, I am chalking this up to iteration in the design process. I have now decided to go all-in and 3D print the entire body! I was not happy with how the neck was secured to the box. So, back to the drawing board:

travel guitar v0

 

Cigar Box Ukulele – My first Thingiverse Remix!

- tvollaro Leave a comment

I posted my first “remix” on Thingiverse today. A cigar box ukulele based on two similar ukes that I found. The neck on this one  is too big to fit on my Replicator2 bed. So, I redesigned the geared head so that it slots into the neck in this Soprano Ukulele. I had to completely remodel the neck and head in Fusion 360. However, I was able to reuse the geared tuners and bridge from one and the fretboard from another.  If you would like to remix further, you can download the head, neck and sound hole files from my Autodesk 360 site. Although the action is a bit high and the scale length is a bit off – It still sounds pretty sweet! Check out the video below.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/qa00a_EXgc4]

Our new Makerbot!

- tvollaro Leave a comment

We decided to take the plunge and purchase a 3D printer for our home. I have exhaustively researched many different models ranging from self building from sourced parts all the way up to models that are useful right out of the box. We opted for the latter – specifically the Makerbot Replicator 2. This choice was driven primarily by my previous experience with this printer at my job. To save on shipping, we took a family field trip into Boston today to make our purchase at thew newly opened Boston Makerbot Store. This kids had fun playing with all of the creations at the store. But they were more jazzed to get the thing home and start printing!

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