3D Printing Our First Build

From finding the perfect model to making it a reality with 3D Printing – This is how we did it!

The Model:

Our journey began with a cheap old broken blue Fender Squire Bullet. After years of use and abuse, the body was very damaged and beyond the point of repair. Instead of donating or throwing it away, we saw an opportunity to combine our passions for guitar building and 3D printing to give it a new lease on life. After salvaging the neck, pickups, pots and knobs, we began a search for a 3D printable body model to serve as a replacement. Keeping with the Fender Stat look, we found the 3d model “Honeycomb Guitar Body” by user GrievingTuna on Printables.com to be the perfect replacement.

<https://www.printables.com/model/271280-honeycomb-guitar-body/files>

Slicing the Model and 3D Printing:

In order for the model to be 3D printable, it was sliced into 8 separate pieces that we then brought into our preferred slicing program, Cura. We decided early on to print our guitar in PLA+ due to it ease in printing, strength, rigidity, and wide availability of colors. After searching numerous reputable filament brands and colors, we settled on the color Sakura Pink by Overture. Due to our current limitations, we had to print every piece one at a time on our trusty Ender 3 S1.

For our slicer settings, we printed PLA+ at 215 degrees Celsius with the heated bed at a temperature of 65 degrees Celsius. In order to save time with each print, we printed at layer height of .28. with an infill density of 25%. But even with these changes put in place, the average print time per piece was around 8 hours so we settled in for the long haul.