Hollow-body electric guitar

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Chris_G
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Hollow-body electric guitar

Post by Chris_G »

Hi,
Here is my biggest FreeCAD modeling project so far : a hollow-body electric guitar.
Guitar-1.jpeg
Guitar-1.jpeg (124.83 KiB) Viewed 10378 times
The top and back have a arched shape, modeled from a point cloud I already had.
The tuners, however, have been quite a challenge for me ( the worm gears especially ).
So they're not completely accurate, but they look good enough.
Guitar-2.jpeg
Guitar-2.jpeg (86.98 KiB) Viewed 10378 times
Guitar-3.jpeg
Guitar-3.jpeg (70.31 KiB) Viewed 10378 times
Here are the bridge, the tailpiece and a pickup :
Guitar-4.jpeg
Guitar-4.jpeg (84.21 KiB) Viewed 10378 times
A view with the top removed :
Guitar-5.jpeg
Guitar-5.jpeg (82.51 KiB) Viewed 10378 times
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Chris_G
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Re: Hollow-body electric guitar

Post by Chris_G »

The most difficult part has been the modeling of the highlighted surfaces below :
Guitar-6.jpeg
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These surfaces have to make a smooth transition, but there is another constraint.
If you extend the straight central part of the neck at both ends, the surfaces have to "cover" the extended neck part.
All my attempts to create these transition surfaces with the Gui, resulted in some kind of hollow areas like this :
pic-11.jpeg
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But thanks to the FC's python scripting, I finally got an acceptable result.
Happy New Year !
Chris
Jee-Bee
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Re: Hollow-body electric guitar

Post by Jee-Bee »

Nice one!!
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yorik
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Re: Hollow-body electric guitar

Post by yorik »

:o Amazing!!
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NormandC
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Re: Hollow-body electric guitar

Post by NormandC »

Chris,

This is incredible. I'm envious, I've wanted to model my own acoustic in forever, I still haven't made the time to do it. :oops:

I have a few questions for you :D
  • How did you model the fretboard, did you use a macro? Years ago forum member ryback08 made one
  • Did you model each fret bar individually, then placed it at the correct location?
  • I assume you made the body shape by scripting rather than using GUI tools?
Thanks for sharing! :)
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Chris_G
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Re: Hollow-body electric guitar

Post by Chris_G »

My main design software is Inkscape ( I feel comfortable with it ).
Tesla-10.jpg
Tesla-10.jpg (37.39 KiB) Viewed 10303 times
This is what I use to tweak and modify the drawing until the customer validates it.
I made an extension in inkscape to generate fretboards.
So the SVG I import in FC has the fret lines.
Then I used some python scripting to create the frets ( bend the fret lines according to fretboard radius, and sweep a sketch along them ).
Time for a good dinner now.
Good night, and have fun !
Chris
Konstantin
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Re: Hollow-body electric guitar

Post by Konstantin »

Nice guitar. Some time ago I tried to make violin like electric guitar in FreeCAD. I wrote about my problems with deck curves somewhere here.

Can you show, or tell me, how you made your deck? With sections, or nurbs, or else somehow?
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ppemawm
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Re: Hollow-body electric guitar

Post by ppemawm »

Most excellent...well done, incredible attention to detail.
Nice presentation as well.
I can see there is much to be learned in FreeCAD for us novices. Can you post the file(s) on Dropbox or are they proprietary?
"It is a poor workman who blames his tools..." ;)
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Chris_G
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Re: Hollow-body electric guitar

Post by Chris_G »

Hi,
To model the arched surface of the top, I started from a point cloud.
Last year, I scanned a guitar top I had with a touch probe on my CNC.
So I had a rectangular set of points.
I imported it with the Points Workbench, and made a approximating Nurbs surface with the reverse engineering Workbench.
Then I imported the body contour from inkscape, and made boolean operations to extract the guitar top face.
( See the attached file )
So , unfortunately, it is not 100% made in FC ...
GuitarTop.fcstd
(279.18 KiB) Downloaded 257 times
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Chris_G
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Re: Hollow-body electric guitar

Post by Chris_G »

Hi,
ppemawm wrote:I can see there is much to be learned in FreeCAD for us novices.
Ahaha, that is funny to hear this from a mad man who modeled a whole engine ! :lol:
ppemawm wrote:Can you post the file(s) on Dropbox or are they proprietary?
The file is pretty big ( 70 MB ) and the document tree is a real mess. I have no Dropbox account, but I should be able to upload it on Github.
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