Electric Guitar body - Gibson scale

Hi,

This is a guitar body that has been designed to be built in a fablab, using mainly a 3D printed for the inner parts, and a laser cutter for the outter parts.

It is composed of 4 3D printed parts that snap together. You just have to add a few bolts and nuts, and a single T-slot 20x20mm aluminium profile to add some rigidity to it.

To top and bottom tables can be cnc milled or laser cut in any material you like. I chose some plain wood for my project but it could also very well be acrylic or even metal.

This guitar is designed to be playable either with or without any amplification. 

It only has one single coil pickup, one potentiometer for the tone and another one for the volume.

The tailpiece is a wraparound style one : https://www.amazon.fr/gp/product/B0912V34XV/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The neck has to be bought separately. I had one from a previous project. As long as you have a Les Paul style neck, it should fit to the neck pocket.

Fabrication

3D printing

The 4 pieces of the body were printed with FormFutura Carbonfil, on a Prusa Mk3.
I printed them with the following parameters :

• Layer height : 0.15mm
• Infill : 20% - Gyroid
• Supports : Yes - ajusted
• Perimeters : 3
• Layers : 7 top layers and 5 bottom layers
• Nozzle temp. : 255
• Bed temp. : 40

I used this material for maximum stiffness and also for its amazing finish, but I made that choice before I modified the file to add the aluminium profile. So I guess you could just use PETG or event regular PLA, now that rigidity is provided by the profile.

Laser cutting

For the top and bottom plates (the .svg files), use 5mm material and cut it with a CNC machine or a laser cutter.

Assembly

You will need the following furniture :

• 23 x M3x6mm Inserts 
• 16 M3x6 bolts for the top and bottom plates + 7 more to connect the parts together
• 2 M3x30 bolts
• 2 M3x25 bolts the screw the to ends of the profil
• a piece of 6 mm dowel to connect pieces A and D
• A 20x20mm t-slot aluminium profile of exactly 344mm in length

You can follow the attached pdf file for detailed instructions.

Begin by putting in place all the inserts using a soldering iron. I found that 350°C is a good temperature. Make sure to hold the insert down with a pair of tweezers when you pull the soldering iron back.

Then screw everything in place, and and finally add the aluminium profile. Warning, you have to find a profile that has threaded holes on each end (M3).

Then, put all the guitar parts in place, and once it is done, you can “close” everything by screwing the top and bottom plates with M3x6 bolts.

I hope you will enjoy this project as much as I did. It could certainly be improved, but I am pretty pleased with it !

Thomas, from Fablab Descartes.