Steel String Acoustic Guitar

thingiverse

What good is a capo (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:698317) without a guitar? If you've got a big 3D printer and a lot of time, you can print your own! Aside from a few metal bits (frets, tuners, truss rod), all parts are 3D printed in PLA. Please visit http://www.bellinghamfoundry.com/blog/2014/11/3/jeff-kerrs-3d-printed-guitar for a nice writeup done by my local makerspace. And here's a video of me trying to play it: https://youtu.be/fihHMRZgja0 (Photos courtesy of the Bellingham Foundry.) Instructions You'll need a big printer for this - mine is 285 x 285mm All parts are printed in PLA with 0.2mm layers. Set the line width to 0.4mm so that the thin walls print properly. On the neck, use at least 4 perimeters and 35% infill. The top and sides print as 3 pieces, the back prints as 3 pieces, and the neck and fretboard both print as 2 pieces. All body parts and neck parts are glued together with superglue. (There are ribs on the inside of the body pieces where you can use small binder clips for clamping them together.) I used gel-type glue and a brush-on accelerator. Then I went back over the seams with a very thin superglue to get any cracks I missed. You'll also need medium fret wire, a set of tuners, a set of bridge pins, and a 1/8" wide bridge, all available from Steward MacDonald. Use light or extra-light gauge steel strings. The neck bolts onto the body using 1/4-20 screws that thread into the heel-rod part of the truss rod assembly (see trussrod.pdf). The trickiest part (aside from the printing) is fabricating the steel truss rod.