The Tikicaster: 3d printed semi-acoustic electric guitar

This is my take on the Telecaster Thinline, Fender's brief foray into the world of hollow body electrics. The body is built the same way as the original. The back, middle and front sections stack up, allowing you to print a hollow body with finish surfaces on both the front and back, and no support.

I modeled the tele body in Cubify Design, then made test prints of each area which interfaced with hardware. With a little bit of adjustment I got the nec, the pickups and the bridge to fit perfectly. Then I exported the base tele body from Cubify into 3dCoat where I sculpted the Tiki faces.

Sorry, but it won't fit on a standard printer. I made the print on my large custom machine. Each part took about 24 hours to print. The slots in the middle part are for steel reinforcement to take the strain from the strings. The whole thing was assembled with epoxy and a bit of bondo before being painted.

We talked about this on the 3D Printing Today podcast available on iTunes, or Stitcher radio learn more at http://www.threedprintingtoday.com/