Official Luthiers Forum!

The aspect of 3D printing that I think is amazing is the potential to print pockets and cavities that are not possible with traditional manufacturing methods. I was recently at a machine tool show and was looking at metal 3D printing where the part had a internal honeycomb/lattice structure that allowed the part to be 30% lighter with the same strength and was only possible with the 3D printing technology.

There is no doubt in my mind that this technology will continue to appear more and more in the near future.

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Brad
Avon, OH

personal opinion with regards to those guitars is I don't like them, I think they look cheesy and there is no way I'd spend that much money on something that looked like that.

Really intrigued by the 3-D printer technology though.

Swiss cheesy.

I saw this technology working at a Boeing facility. It's fascinating to watch 3D parts form that couldn't even be made on a cnc machine...but I like wood now

Fact is...some people will like this. The world turns. Things change. Who knows what will come of it? Still...I'd bet against this getting too far.

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I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

A guitar made on an SLS printer from stainless steel might be cool, but 3D printed plastic really doesn't do it for me. The look of it doesn't do it for me. At least the FDM stuff (where it squeezes it out like a glue gun). The sintered plastic (where it melts plastic powder together with a laser) looks nicer to my eye, since there are no layers.

I'll be putting together a UV-based printer that'll print in acrylic next year. Really useful for prototypes and even some basic tooling. It's getting cheap enough now that for small complex prototypes it's more cost effective to have them printed in stainless than to machine them.

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

We've used the 3D printed stuff for prototypes to do fit checks for 5 or 6 years. Pretty cool stuff but definitely not interested in a guitar made from the stuff. But somebody will want em.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I like wood. But that is pretty cool though.

I did fantasize about setting a wood guitar in a fixture, doing a quick laser scan, and then having a wet-look acrylic finish applied to it using this technology. Software wise, you'd need some pretty special tricks to get pores filled and then a level surface. But it might be within the realm of possibility. Adhesion problems would probably end the idea though.

Fun to think about.

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I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic