It seems like the practice of 3D printing instruments has been a mainstay of the hobby since its inception.

Today we’re going to be looking at a guitar and while that may not sound particularly exciting, the way it was printed is the real draw here.

The “Steel String Guitar, Take 2” by LoboCNC on Thingiverse is a six-string, 3D printed guitar that prints in six separate pieces. The creator, who goes by Jeff Kerr on YouTube, printed it with 15% carbon fiber filled PLA which he claims is “50% stiffer than regular PLA”, which is needed on the neck of the instrument to hold those strings.

While you can get more details about printing it for yourself by following the above link to Thingiverse, the printer it was created on is also worth looking at.

The Upside-Down, Inside-Out (UDIO) 3D printer is a rather unique beast that takes the regular design of a 3D printer and turns it (quite literally) on its head. The head is on the base with the printer bed being above.

You can see it in the video playlist below with the second video showing off the guitar being played.

To be entirely honest here we’re not sure what (if any) advantages are afforded by this design. The description of the video claims that there are “very few structural components” but that doesn’t really explain the need for the design.

As with many 3D prints and printers we’ve featured in the past, it may be a case of doing something because it could be done, not because it needed to be done. And, hey, it’s interesting which is all we can hope for.

If you want something more local, we’d like to point you to the guitar created by Hans Fouche of Fouche 3D Printing. Fouche’s granule-fed machines create extremely dense prints that easily handle the stresses of the strings meaning that the fancy carbon fibre filament used on the other guitar was never necessary. Hell, this was the same process that created a working car jack, so you know this stuff is serious.