Saturday 15 October 2016

Arrived at the crossroads...........now what?

Ever feel like you'd be better off sitting naked in the middle of the snowy river during winter and hitting your family jewels with a flat rock because it would feel better than pursuing a print?

lol me either..... but I can see it from here.

If it could go wrong it has!
* Brittle filament

* The recess that holds the neck seems like it's grown wider and the neck flops around like a Richard in a gumboot where as the previous print it slid into a tight fit even without the bolts. The neck joint works as a neck should it just doesn't slide in like it did before before bolting it down.

* I had to counter sink for the thicker neck shelf so the bolts I have here would fit and that was a -messy and ugly exercise. I didn't want to buy longer bolts as the next design will take all these issues into account. Note that the 4 screws with washers are more than enough to hold the neck.

* The old neck I'd left still strung up on the old uke and it now has a permanent upward bow which means even if the neck housing is strong enough the neck is too weak to take the tension of the strings.

So I'm in two or more minds here, give up or back to cad for another redesign. (I'm so sick of this thing!)

A move to plain white pla which has been presenting with its own issues on the roll(s) I have here lately, but might prove stronger than the glow in the dark pla I'm using now.

Do I make a wooden neck which is what I was going to do originally but changed so others can print it? It would be stronger and I have some thoughts on using rectangular bar to be set into the neck instead of the carbon fibre tube. Something that is used in luthiery often with timber necks needing support but not adjustment with a truss rod. More carbon fibre but solid not hollow?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


I used a dowel locator, I only have one 6mm one :-) to transfer the hole layout to the new body. I originally just used a transfer punch type of  method before because the fretboard wasn't glued on.

I was reluctant to model all the holes in Max before but now I have the thicker neck shelf and not wanting to buy more/longer bolts, should I just model the counter sink to accommodate the shorter bolts or just buy longer bolts?






I've highlighted the small nearly invisible pin prick the dowel pin made with a pencil





The reason we have the word fugly in our word keeping thingy. Despite its looks it's a tight strong joint, just ugly.

Brittle filament just shattered by the only bit I had that was the right size a spade bit :-)

Looks worse in person but the relief is too much and more of a bow.

The nut end and heel end are proud, meaning for this to even start to work some neck angle would be needed even if it wasn't going to bend even more under tension.



Grown wider buy 2 to 3 mm somehow............or the neck shrunk or both.



I'm currently reprinting another thing, in glow in the dark pla to compare it to the white one I printed yesterday.
The white is making my printer look like it has a bent z axis or lose belts as it comes out with bad banding. It could also be the cooling as I added the new silicone boot for the e3d hot end and the fan duct doesn't point where it did before and the white could be very dependent on cooling. 

This change doesn't seem to affect other colours, so it might just be the white after all, being very finicky about cooling. Hence, the need for the reprint to show the difference and set my mind at rest that it isn't the faults most people would swear it was. I've see the white do this before and also want to reassure myself it isn't the light reflecting differently off it compared to other type or colours of filament.

The white is still good for structural things that don't need to look good, but you wouldn't rely on it for a nice finish.

So if I'm reprinting in white I'll need to source some more that might not suffer from this issue,
and if I'm going back into cad adding and correcting things then I should separate the ribs and use a shell modifier on them to thicken them up a bit more so they're not so skinny and susceptible to breaking.

3ds Max's shell modifier adds thickness to anything it is applied to, (you can make things skinny as well by adding it to the inside)

A combination of a different filament and thicker ribs will help the infill support more area so they're not so susceptible to breaking,.............he said obviously trying  to convince himself it is the solution he's desperately looking for. :-)
I'll also need to research carbon fibre solid stock say 3-4 mm thick 12 - 15 mm wide and whatever suits the neck length. Do I add two or three side by side.

Something like this
My brain hurts lol









No comments:

Post a Comment