3D Plasticaster Build

[lunaticds]

Clear either needs to go on as flat a surface as possible, or you need to use countless coats to build up enough depth to sand it back flat. It will just follow the contours underneath it, it won’t just fill up any dips first but also cover the bumps. You’d need a very thinned paint indeed for it to pool in the pits and even then, as mist of that liquid would be thinners, it would still dry out leaving a smaller pit, and the paint layer would be even thinner. A standard spray can is probably 30% paint/lacquer, the rest is propellent and thinners. Increase the amount of thinners and the paint content goes down considerably, so you’d need maybe 3x the number of cans.

Plus, too much thinning affects the paint finish and of course on anything but a horizontal surface, it’s just going to run off and not stick. So, getting the surface as flat as possible first is the ideal solution.

For the bass idea, as it would also have to be in parts (unless you get a new 3D printer), maybe you could make a full solid body bass in a jigsaw-style, so the pieces slot together nicely, provide mechanical strength for the joints and provide lots of glue area? You could also highlight the jigsaw effect if you wanted by having the pieces slightly different heights.

Thanks for that. I'll let it dry properly and give it a fairly aggressive sand to flatten it back out - most of the pock marks are from me touching it too soon, so I'll flatten it out, respray and get a couple of coats back over it and see if they come out tidier then try a gentle sand at 1200 and see how I'm looking.

Re: the bass idea. The design I'm looking at is a solid body, though it's only about 60% infill, but it'll still have a fair amount of mass too it. It also uses a couple of 10mm steel bars in the middle to re-enforce it as he's found the tension of the bass strings is a bit much. I suspect upping the infill to 100% would probably compensate it, but I reckon that'd be one heavy bass.. not to mention the hundred bucks in filament and couple of weeks of printing.
The relative solid body is definitely appealing - lots of good contact area for holding the whole thing together.
The jigsaw idea is interesting though I'd have to admit I suspect the comfort level playing it would suffer. Some interesting opportunities though to do something dodgy.... maybe embed a white circle that I can put a decal on top of.. with some LEDs under it or something. A little wanky but unique nevertheless.

[Simon Barden]

I’d envisage a flat back with just a couple of mm height different max between pieces, say base height, +1mm and +2mm. Can’t see how it would be more uncomfortable than all the thin spindles on the Plasticaster! And you can still build in comfort curves.

[lunaticds]

I’d envisage a flat back with just a couple of mm height different max between pieces, say base height, +1mm and +2mm. Can’t see how it would be more uncomfortable than all the thin spindles on the Plasticaster! And you can still build in comfort curves.

Yeah, jury is out on the comfort of the Plasticaster until I can put it on and see how it goes. My thoughts are.... bloody uncomfortable!

[Simon Barden]

Maybe fill in some of the holes with flat plastic panels in the area you right hand goes, plus maybe a few other ones at random so it looks part of the design rather than added on?

[lunaticds]

Maybe fill in some of the holes with flat plastic panels in the area you right hand goes, plus maybe a few other ones at random so it looks part of the design rather than added on?

Actually, I'm surprised that there are holes in fairly good spots so it's more comfortable than I gave it credit for.

Progress shot:

I used some left over copper tape to put under the bridge so it's a little more serviceable than either a soldered wire.. or just a bare wire squashed in place (an old Samick bass bridge I once had was like that).

She's pretty ugly. A couple of scratches happened.. maybe I'll cover them.. maybe I won't. Pickups were a colossal pain in the rear to get in there properly, but they're in. The slot for the pickup selector is gross. The cutter I used on my dremel clone is dodgy and its making 3mm wide gaps where it should be making them about half that.
You don't really get to see the cracking over the control panel in this light.. too much reflection highlighting the crappy bits (which is most of it). Still the sooner the other bits get here, the sooner I can put this thing together and see if it's actually playable.

[lunaticds]

The neck is currently a bit gross - thanks in no small part to learning the hard way about mixing acrylic enamel colours and polyurethane. I've ordered some Krylon black and clear coat for the ST-1 Custom build, so I'll use a little of that to fix that up given it won't take much work.

[lunaticds]

Given the ST-1 custom kit arrived today, I was finally able to grab the tuners and bridge and put this together.
Let's keep with the "successful failure" at this stage.
The tuners were no major drama to install beyond having to enlarge the holes a little.
The bridge went on with no major issues after a quick measure. I wish I'd thought of measuring before I stuck some copper tape down to earth the bridge. That's a bit of a mess that still needs a clean up.

The bad:
I need to shim the neck. A lot. Given I'm working with so much plastic, I'll just make a plastic shim to fit in. With the bridge action set as low as it'll go, I've got about a 10mm gap at the end of the fret board that I need to reduce.

[lunaticds]

The 3D Plasticaster has moved to the status of Complete (ish).

I tried a couple of shim options today. 1.6mm did the job nicely (I know huge by shim standards). I was able to get the action where I wanted it though I needed some slight adjustment to the neck. The intonation isn't perfect. I'm not going to chase that too much just yet. Will let it settle for a while given the necks been off it. The 1st string did snap by the time I was finished. I don't want to open a whole new pack for one string, so I may try to salvage the kit string from the Jurassicaster build when I swap it over to the DR Black Beauties.


I also noticed that the pickup selector is dead at the bottom, and somehow the volume is where the tone should be. I'll swap the knobs rather than the pots.
On the upside, I have a kill switch.

The headstock is a little manky on account of a few layers of paint, and me never being able to get in close to the Plasticaster badge to tidy up. Originally it was white, but paint managed to bleed in under the tape, so I just sprayed it. The rest of the body is pretty grungy, so I can't see much point having a perfectly flat head stock on this build. The back of the neck is a little manky too - you can see where the black finish that was on the neck meets the respray on the headstock. Theres also a little bit of paint on the fretboard that I couldn't see until I took a photo. Again, not high on my care list. It's ugly anyway.



But... does it play?
....
Yes. I wouldn't say it has great tone. It has passable sustain. It's pretty dull on a clean channel until you break it up. Add some crunch or OD, give it some reverb and I'm fairly sure that I've played worse guitars from eBay.
It's more comfortable than it looks. The balance is marginal. It's not quite at neck dive stage, but if I wasn't using a 30+ year old piece of leather I suspect it might go without too much issue.

Verdict?
Great conversation piece that I can pull off the wall, plug in and prove that it plays (the idiot playing it not so much). It's light, it cost me <$50 for a neck, $40 filament, $30 in paint/filler and has about $40 worth of pickups/electronics. The other hardware is surplus from the Jurassicaster kit.
Let's call it $160. The neck's straight, the frets are level, it has a pretty reasonable action and the electronics are at least better than you'd get in a cheap Chinese axe. It isn't humming or buzzing despite the single coils and bugger all shielding. Plus.. well technically it's "made" in Australia, so there's that too.

If it wasn't a bit of a gimmick and pretty ugly, I'd probably invest in a better bridge and tuners. At this stage it's not worth it. If I was going to print it again on a printer capable of higher quality print and put a lot more effort into the body prep, I'd probably go all out and have good everything.

Still, this one will have a permanent space on the wall... just as soon as I can get to Bunnings and buy some more gear to hold up all these new guitars.

[dozymuppet]

Bravo. A crazy project come to life.

Sent from my Pixel 4 using Tapatalk

[andybanks]

I've been waiting to see this all together. Well done!

So what are the big take-aways from this build for the next poor sucker who tries this?

I'm thinking along the lines of:

1. know that finishing on the inside is nearly impossible after it is made, so get the slicer settings as good as you can to get the best finish possible off the printer.
2. joins need to be considered as they will be critical to the finish, small surface areas are hard to keep together
3. consider the weight and how you can balance the guitar overall (I am thinking of including a pocket or 2 in the design to allow for some ballast to be included to offset the neck weight)
4. It is possible that timber from neck to bridge may assist with sustain and playability. It may also assist in reducing the need to shim critical dimensions like the neck joint to get a good action?
5. The sky is the limit in terms of design, but don't forget to consider how comfortable the end result will be for the player.

I see ODD Guitars is using SLS printing and Nylon (which is still out of the home-builder price range) but they do have some cool ideas.



Again, congrats on making it work. It does certainly make for a conversation piece if nothing else. :-)

Andy