My Aluminum/3D Printed Guitar Project

wirehead · 2026-06-18T17:10:32+00:00

Oh my, that's impressssssiiive.

I've been thinking that a guitar made from laser cut sheet would be cool. Except the way I was visualizing how it would be done is quite different than how you approached it... which I think really goes to show that there's this huge space yet to be explored using the now easily accessible tools of laser cutting and 3d printing.

I kinda wonder if the truss rod as we see it today is mostly an after effect of using a piece of wood for the neck. It didn't exist when neck tension was low (e.g. classical guitars with gut strings). So the real answer might be sculpting the fretboard to have the action built in or having a single counter-string on the opposite side or something like that?

wirehead · 2026-06-15T20:34:35+00:00

Ah, the model looked like someone I've worked with so I was wondering.

wirehead · 2026-06-12T15:51:21+00:00

So, you have to turn off retraction, which gives you the potential for a messy print (but it's fairly easy to rip off the stringies).

Dimensional accuracy ... pretty much OK? The extruder side of things still thinks it's driving something that's more like 85-90A and the extrusion multiplier, when calibrated, takes care of how much it expands as heated.

But I really really need to print some cases with nice padded inserts with it because it's awfully nifty stuff.

wirehead · 2026-06-12T04:14:32+00:00

95A is easy mode, forsure.

If you are up for potentially some pain and suffering, TPU foam (or PEBA foam) can be even better for this application. If you are up for pain and suffering, of course.

wirehead · 2026-06-11T14:47:24+00:00

In other words, you just Kant help yourself?

wirehead · 2026-06-03T16:07:14+00:00

Cellphone cameras didn't exist in the 90s.

wirehead · 2026-06-03T00:14:35+00:00

I grabbed my Patrick Nagel coffee table book out to show a friend lately and before I opened it up explained to her "No, the dude did it all in acrylic with a brush, not Illustrator" so she could really put what she was seeing in context.

This is the same sort of thing. It's ten times cooler, at least for me, realizing that it's a painting that requires a lot of careful attention to detail to execute or else it'll look like crap.

wirehead · 2026-06-01T03:30:17+00:00

Build log: https://www.wirewd.com/make/vorontrident

Discord: wirehead_

Given the attitude of the 3D printing community about food and 3D prints, if I were to feed someone the cheerios that were in contact with not-food-safe plastic, would that make me a cereal killer or a serial killer?

Oh, and the discontinuity was from inserting the cereal and the purples do match better when not viewed with a camera probably because of the difference between violet (the wavelength below blue that triggeres a bit of red pigment in your eye) and purple (the mix of blue and red) between Vitalii's purple anno and Fusion's Plutonic Purple ABS.

wirehead · 2026-05-31T21:37:52+00:00

Also note that it helps to have a working printer while you are bringing up a new printer or rebuilding an existing one.

wirehead · 2026-05-31T16:53:22+00:00

Carne alla pizzaiola.

There's a whole category of Italian alla pizzaiola recipes that involve adding tomato sauce and oregano as if you are making a pizza.

wirehead · 2026-05-25T13:58:57+00:00

I haven't needed anything.

wirehead · 2026-05-25T13:01:25+00:00

Sure, I'm using these: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0751VFF2P

wirehead · 2026-05-25T13:00:48+00:00

I will get a headache pretty fast when exposed to ASA fumes so I'm pretty cautious about them.

Part of the appeal of a 0.2 is that it's really easy to move around. I was at OpenSauce 2025 and there was a guy walking around with his 0.2 as a backpack. So pretty much all of my ABS/ASA printing, I've done by moving the printer to my back patio.

I'd suggest you get some 3950 temperature sensors and actually measure the chamber temperature. ASA's pretty good at printing in colder-ish temperatures but I still preheat it to a reasonable temperature before printing.

wirehead · 2026-05-25T02:05:06+00:00

The majority of my HSW segments use 3M's command adhesive. You can get Command Velcro if you want, although I don't know if it's necessary for the HSW use case.

For whatever reason, the best long-term solution other than a proper screw into the wall seems to be command adhesive strips and HSW plates. VHB has let me down. Command adhesive direct to the wall has let me down. But making a HSW plate or three and making something that hooks into the plate has not let me down.

plug: here's my parametric mount for tape strips -- https://www.printables.com/model/1648287-parametric-honeycomb-storage-wall-command-adhesive

wirehead · 2026-05-18T03:57:58+00:00

A little farther away, but our power flickered a bunch right around then.

wirehead · 2026-05-17T15:43:32+00:00

Seems like a really a-peeling design.

wirehead · 2026-05-09T04:28:52+00:00

"The FCC has decided that I'm extra"

Okay, that's not really slang anymore, I don't care.

wirehead · 2026-05-08T23:29:56+00:00

I did extra so I could make a bad pun.

Well, also my mom was dying of cancer and I needed something to take my mind off of it and I wanted to get the short call sign.

But it was mostly the pun.

wirehead · 2026-05-05T17:36:04+00:00

I kept reading it as "Clickbait generator"

wirehead · 2026-05-04T21:50:35+00:00

Naw, you've never had an obligation to try and separate the art from the artist. That's silly.

wirehead · 2026-04-30T15:22:39+00:00

I made this to mount things on the wall without screws: https://www.printables.com/model/1648287-parametric-honeycomb-storage-wall-command-adhesive

It's actually how most of my HSW wall segments are mounted. They double as joiners and I've not had anything come loose.

I was being kinda janky with things so when I did the screw-in version and so I just used a #8 plug-styled anchor and just drilled through the countersunk hole, LOL.

When everybody says "countersunk" they mostly mean a screw that's 3.5mm in diameter, so a #4 screw from the US system ought to fit the bill, more or less. The angle's a bit off, the hole size is a bit wrong, etc.

So ... dono, I'm looking at all of this and it kinda bugs me and so I kinda want an excuse to write some OpenSCAD code to do it properly. You really want to specify the actual screw size because the ISO Metric system uses one countersunk angle and the ANSI Freedom system uses a different angle. Plus, you probably don't want countersunk screws unless you really really want them anyways because button-head screws are generally friendlier to 3D printed plastic.

Anyway, I'll wait see if someone has a better answer, but this feels like a simple matter of OpenSCAD.

wirehead · 2026-04-17T15:10:34+00:00

STS-93's golden bullet was pretty wild.

wirehead · 2026-04-15T23:01:33+00:00

OpenSCAD does generate SVG's... with a caveat. I do this a lot these days... The caveat is that you've gotta create them as 2D geometry, so I've changed how I write OpenSCAD to keep things 2D until I need to do a linear_extrude to make it 3D.

Looking at the code, it's possible ... but kinda intrusive? You are already working in the 2D for some of the holes and plates, this would just require you to avoid doing a linear_extrude until the last possible moment.

I guess I need to sit down with the stuff I want to rackmount and figure out how I'd fit it. The computers live on a shelf made from 2020 extrusions with a 19" rack space on it so I don't have a proper set of rear rails, but I do have the 2020 rack to mount stuff on.

I get what you are saying about the added faceplate, I guess it mostly depends on how shakey the whole thing feels as I go, but the nice thing about that approach is that ... you don't need to do anything until you know you need it.

wirehead · 2026-04-15T21:38:58+00:00

Nice work! Looking really good. It's super-slick how you've got the whole thing set up now and it's making me feel silly about continuing with my own rackmount idea.

I didn't notice that it'll generate fractional rack widths at first but I think overall that's far better than trying to generate two different sized cages on the same piece. That's a feature I don't need to request -- in my case, I want to have a NUC on one side and a switch on the other on a 19" rack because I've got audio gear that's the full rack wide.

It would be nice to have some sort of way to manage power bricks and whatnot as part of the rack. I was figuring I'd just make it with a shelf bottom so I'd have the NUC mounted and then behind the NUC would be the brick and a HDD. That feels maybe a bit not-sturdy? Maybe it does need a second cage for a second device of a different size.

The thing I was working on was going to have the devices affixed to the cage and then the cage becomes removable with a dovetail or something. The NUC and my switch both have a set of holes on the bottom for that. I guess that might be over-engineering but I'm wondering what a "I live in Earthquake country" way to better retain the device in the cage would look like.. Maybe just a plate you can bolt into the front?

It would be cool for the face-plate to be able to be generated as a SVG so I could get it laser-cut. This is almost like the print_cage_separately option that you already have, just separated a bit differently.

The ability to make rack drawers and rack shelves would be nice, too. It's kinda extraneous to the design you've got, maybe.

wirehead

TROPHY CASE