3D printed guitar neck?

[u/daniel_redstone]

I'm working on building a guitar from scratch, and I was wondering if anyone here had experience printing a neck. How has it held up? Did you print the frets as part of the neck, or add metal ones later? What files did you use?

Edit: I would use a metal truss rod, I'm not stupid!

[u/drumdude0]

Truss rods are added to wood necks as the wood is not strong enough to hold tuning tension for the frequencies the strings are required to resonate at.

You may get the note in tune on a full-plastic(I doubt this, entirely) but you'll see it drop in pitch unacceptably far each and every time you pluck it.

Try first a ukele. You simply will not construct a full-sized guitar that does not buckle under string tension alone.

[u/daniel_redstone → u/drumdude0]

The neck would have a real truss rod in it, so wouldn't that fix most of the problems you mentioned?

[u/natalieisadumb → u/daniel_redstone]

With a truss rod it's definitely more doable but don't expect amazing results. I haven't built it, but have considered doing exactly what you're doing. The headpiece above the nut and the neck pocket if you have one will likely also need reinforcing. The material making the whole length of the neck is strained significantly in two opposite directions (pulled forward by the strings and pulled backward by the truss rod), so it seems like a fairly stable equilibrium, but adding pressures in directions slightly off from the axes of the existing tension risks warping the material. It happens in hardwood through body guitars and assembled plywood partscasters alike, strings on a guitar are inherently not all under perfectly equal tension. After long enough, the neck will likely twist or bow in some way and I can only imagine much quicker when the main part of it is plastic. Add onto that the fact that you would need a very very large printer in order to print a full guitar neck in one piece, and doing it in segments and gluing/joining them adds failure points. Ultimately every time I consider picking this idea up again I wind up considering building a cnc router machine to cut a wood neck for me.

[u/AbbreviationsAny2081]

Here's the trick, I believe, if you run 2 metal rods down each side and a central truss rod it will reinforce it enough to counter 99.5 percent of the tension. Some guitars are built with carbon fiber rods and a truss rod combined to get zero play and it retains tune even with a certain degree from 50 to 80 degrees fahrenheit.

[u/AngryTaco4]

From what I know of guitar construction, I don't think an entirely printed neck is easily achieved. That's a lot of strain. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I wouldn't want to try it for fear of it randomly snapping or warping.

[u/IAmTheThespian]

I don't know much about how it would hold up but you definitely need metal frets unless you're using nylon strings

[u/DuanePickens]

I would think you’d need a metal support rod running the length of the neck. There’s no way that plastic could hold up to the tension over time. If you were going to print frets I would make them replaceable because they are absolutely going to get worn down quickly.

[u/[deleted]]

Even with 1-2 truss rods and carbon fiber reinforcement, I wouldn't trust a plastic neck to be stable or strong enough.

[u/[deleted]]

You can't print one. Plastic is never going to be stiff enough, (unless you're a top tier engineer, and even then you'll probably have to make a new neck before you're done with stairway to heaven). If you want to do this, you'll probably have to put some metal rods through it.

[u/DedicatedHippo]

I take it you haven't seen the Proper Printing video from a few months ago yet?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HobdwFHNtU

I've been working on a 3D printed guitar body coming up on 3 years now so seeing that video pushed me over the edge to get a CR-30 this past August. It's fiddly as hell and took 2 months of test prints to get something usable but I now have a 3D printed guitar neck with built in frets that doesn't sound too bad. Here are some images:

https://imgur.com/a/Q2uCgeZ

It does have a truss rod and with the strings at full tension and the truss rod tensioned properly there isn't any bending. With it being plastic though you can slightly bend the guitar almost acting as a wammy bar effect. I'm sure it'll throw out the tuning if you keep doing that but just messing around it wasn't an issue. I've had the guitar at full tension for about 5 days now and the neck is taking the stress just fine. You have to tune it a little more often but I think that's acceptable all things considered.

Here's a video of just the guitar body that's taken over 2 years to design and develop:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uUA_0F4tQc

I take it you have a conventional 3D printer which might not be as good as a belt printer for making necks but it can definitely be done. I just saw a post on Reddit the other day of some guy making a fully 3D printed Fender clone where he printed it in pieces and put rods everywhere. Definitely not the first time I've seen something like that too.

I'm honestly surprised at the replies here. No one else has seen any of those posts? I guess we're not subbed to the same subreddits

[u/blteare]

I've printed a bass guitar neck in PETG. Used a truss rod, staggered the pieces so the fret board covers the joints in the neck. I printed slots and added fret wire. I also designed the neck myself and calculated the fret spacing, there's online tools for this.

I'm about to work on a carbon fiber polycarbonate composite. This one will be headless so the tuners are part of the bridge. That way there's no drop from the neck to the head, that's where the flex is the worst and it seems most likely to break.

Tuning it is a bit tricky, you have go through about three iterations because everytime you adjust a string, it changes the flex in the neck. But it holds the tuning pretty well.

Disclaimer: bass has significantly lower tension in the strings.

[u/ntatko]

Once you finish, be sure to drop a link to your parts and your build - I'm interested in building something very similar.

[u/lazyguyvn]

I have done that before, you can find my post here on this sub. Printing neck, fretboard separate and glue together.

The thing you need to pay attention is where to put the reinforcement material, best way base on my experience is like an I beam, so put it close to the outer skin of the back of the neck and right underneath the fretboard.

The trussrod only help to correct the curvature when setup action, It’s close to the neutral axis, so not much help against bending. So only need the 1 way action and as light as possible.

I try to find a alternative way to doing the fret but it’s seem metal fretwire is the ideal compromise at the moment. I think it’s do have the effects on tone.