3D Printers and DIY Guitars?

[IheartNY]

With 3D printers becoming more accessible, how easy or difficult will it be to print out the parts to put together a guitar? Can someone just buy a piece of wood of their choosing, print out: the body, sides, top, neck, and headstock? Then assemble the parts with glue/epoxy & add oem/after-market parts of their choosing.

[HHP]

Sure sounds easy. Might be that cutting out the parts is not the hard part of guitar making. People sell kits today with the parts already cut.

[redir]

Originally Posted by IheartNY

With 3D printers becoming more accessible, how easy or difficult will it be to print out the parts to put together a guitar? Can someone just buy a piece of wood of their choosing, print out the shapes needed, and glue the pieces together for the frame?

What do you mean? Whats a frame? 3d printers cannot print wood though there is a material they can use that is made from wood. It will never be the same though. There are already people printing electric guitars and the possibilities are endless but acoustics are different. I'm sure you can print an acoustic guitar from some material that will make the guitar at least sound guitar like but it won't be the same as one made from real wood. I've played carbon fiber guitars and they actually sounded real good, like a guitar, but not like one made of wood, it's just different. So unless the guitar in it's traditional sense is going through a period of change from the tone produced by wood to that of another substance then I'm not seeing 3d printing as taking over the guitar manufacturing process any time soon if ever.

[LouieAtienza]

For wood, the best machine is a 3D CNC router. There are many DIY macines out there (I built two myself) and they can be built rather cheaply. The real cost is software; the more complicated your parts, the higher end a CAM system you`ll need.

I have some vids on youTube showing some macining of electric guitar parts, if you want I`ll PM the link..

[Simon Fay]

3d Printing is based on additive technology - basically, the materials are homogenous and limited. I'm sure as time goes by this technology will really expand BUT it will never be a Star Trek replicator where you can duplicate a piece of Cocobolo or something like that.

The value of 3d printing currently lies with materials that are made out of plastic and metal. It is a relatively slow process but allows you to makes shapes that are difficult to machine with other tools -- for example, solid metal structures with curved interiors -- things that would otherwise require complicated molds but can be made easily with a 3d printer.