A Guitar And Gear Support Forum

Sort of a crazy question here but I am curious if any you ever made, owned, or played a 3D printed electric guitar. I know very little about 3D printing. I have seen some pictures on the internet of a few that look to be made out of plastic or some composite material. Some look pretty creative but I really do not care for the visual on them. I do not have the skills or tools to make something like this but if it worked with wood I could see using Walnut, Oak, or other species of woods not commonly found with electrics in say a Telecaster, Strat, Les Paul, SG, or other style guitars. If anybody has or knows anything I would love to hear about it or better yet if you have pictures that would be even better.

There are a few 3D printed guitars out there in the wild, but I know no specifics about them. I have had a 3D printer for a long time though, for R&D prototyping purposes. As such, when I have ideas for guitar innovations, 3D printing is a pretty quick way to make a prototype to try out. I would say though, that any part that takes significant stress is likely to break if it's 3D printed. The main reason for that isn't the materials, but that 3D printed things tend to "de-laminate" between layers under stress. For example, I tried 3D printing a stop-tail design, and it broke before I could finish tuning the guitar to standard... with a pretty violent pop. I have some other potential product prototypes that take less stress mounted on a few guitars right now. They're stand-ins for metal parts that will handle wear better, but sometimes 3D printing works in a pinch. No pictures though, I need to protect any possible IP until ready to release something.

I've a friend who does 3D printing and we have slowly been planning a 3D printed guitar. These days you have plenty of options, and hundreds of different materials. But you do need quite a good printer as well, regular 3D prints are rather brittle and basically plastic parts for light use possible, but the higher up you go they can print even metals, and also in between there are plastics that have quite a bit of strength as well.

But 3D printing for wood is basically CAD work. At school we have all kinds of CAD systems and lathes the size of a truck that can 'print' like a single piece truck intake manifold just like that out of aluminum for instance, all kinds of very complex stuff and rather large pieces. Why not wood as well.

But I'm mostly interested in making a plastic one. I've built a guitar body out of limestone, used aluminum, many kinds of wood and composite materials and the body material doesn't really matter much at all for sound, so plastic would be quite interesting.

But so far we've only printed like logos and stuff.

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Hey man, late to the party I know, but I do a lot of 3D printed guitar bodies. If you do your design work right... They're an absolute blast to play on and you can quite literally make whatever you want. Check out my insta for some of the most recent models and if you have any questions... Just ask!

https://www.instagram.com/tasmaniakguit ... lvMHF2OQ==