I wanted to create custom table tennis rackets for my kids – it was a fun little project! One racket is in the style of a Stiga Cybershape (as requested), the other one has a traditional shape but is slightly smaller to fit better for kids-hands.
The handles were a nightmare though, it took me several tries to get them right without wood flying off the CNC. But in the end it turned out really nice. The wood of the blade is basic plywood (5 layers) from the local hardware store. It’s quite light with quite decent playing characteristics.
Our children often decided in the middle of the night that they had slept enough and that it’s time to get up now… hurray!
We came across a clock for little kids. It used different colors to display day and night. I really liked the idea and it actually worked but the clock was just not nice. Setting it up was a nightmare and it used a bright blue light in the night which is far from ideal when you’re actually supposed to sleep.
So I figured that it should be possible to build something better than that…
Indicates when it’s ok/safe to wake up the parents and when nighttime starts
works as a night light
uses warm colors
keeps the same level of brightness no matter what time it is (no flashing leds – everything to not wake up anyone)
points the kids into the right direction when learning to tell the time. Each Led represents one hour
Easy setup
The first tests with our kids were quite promising. Of course they were already used to the concept since we had this other clock… first feedback was that it’s easier to fall asleep… hurray!
ScreenshotScreenshot
Concept
The LEDs dimmed yellow. The current time is indicated by bright yellow. The start of the night is displayed via a dimmed red.
The LEDs are dimmed red. The current time is indicated by a bright red. The start of the day is displayed via a dimmed yellow.
The LEDs dimmed yellow.
The current time is indicated by bright yellow.
The start of the night is displayed via a dimmed red.
The LEDs are dimmed red.
The current time is indicated by a bright red.
The start of the day is displayed via a dimmed yellow.
Implementation
The first Prototype consists of a 3D printed housing, 12 RGB LEDs and an esp32 board. Pretty simple setup but nice to experiment with.
Interested?
I’m thinking about producing some sort of a mini series.
If you’re interested let me know. If a couple of people give a shout I will consider building a batch of early prototypes.
So please let me know by entering your email address below, or simply send me a mail/leave a comment.
(No worries I won’t use your address for anything other than maybe coming back to you if there are enough people interested. Nothing else. I will surely not spam you with mails since I’m way to lazy for such things…)
I always had the plan to build a custom saddle for my trial bike. You’re always standing when riding trials so technically you don’t need a saddle.
So for years I rode without a saddle. But now with having access to a 3D printer… behold my new trial bike saddle – pretty cute he 😉
It’s surprisingly sturdy so you could actually sit down if you want plus it’s relatively lightweight (48g) and of course the bike looks much better than without a saddle (at least to my eyes).
Printend in PLA – I was thinking of using PETG but I didn’t have a black roll lying around – maybe next time. I designed it using surface modeling which was new to me – it’s fun 🙂
My Höfner Shorty was always slipping off my leg when playing the guitar while sitting – so I designed a fin…
Getting the right contour of the fin to fit snugly was a struggle though. It seems like the Höfner was shaped by hand – no straight angels and no radius was the same. Ultimately I made a plaster cast, cut it into cross sections, scanned them, transferred it into my 3d model, 3d printed small sheets of the contour to check the fitting. After I got it right I fired up the CNC…
A bowl made out of a tree trunk. This was for testing a 3d milling operation. Originally I planned to surface the bottom part as well but after milling the bowl I figured it might be even better when left untouched and keeping the bark.
I wanted to try out box joints on the CNC. One ideal piece for this is the Ulmer Hocker – a stool which every student of the HFG Ulm had to build. Originally it was designed by Max Bill (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulmer_Hocker).
I did quite some research and I remembered the C-Möble from my professor Jochen Gros back in university. He did also think about how to handle wood joints on a CNC.
I must admit I never really liked the joints they were using since they always left visible holes in the corner of the joints to work around the issue that when you cut a part with a router you will always have a rounded corner in the size of the router bit diameter.
Unhandled box joint – this ain’t working. The sharp corners will clash with the rounded inner corners
The dogbone solution (which I don’t like because you will end up with visible holes in your workpiece) – The inner corners are enlarged by removing material
The solution I used – rounding the corners so that they match the radius of the rounded inner corners
I wanted to find a solution which fits seamlessly. I ended up rounding the box joints with the same radius as the router bit I used for cutting the joints. This worked quite well.
I had a bit of an issue with the wood bending, especially on the side panels. I removed some material on the inner side – seems like if you do something like this, do it from both sides. Lessons learned…
A simple holder for a tablet. Requirements were: must work while laying on the couch placing it on the legs without slipping or tipping. And support for different angels – check…
This is my first skate guitar. I built it in 2013. Back then I stumbled upon the great skate guitars by those guys from Argentina. I was amazed by the idea of building a guitar out of used skateboard decks!
I didn’t really like their „standard“ model, I think it’s too thin and too small but when I saw the model they build for the guitarist of Pearl Jam I was immediately thrilled!
So I wanted to have this one! Being a designer (and a skateboarder and a guitar player) and knowing, that designers can do everything but nothing properly (that’s probably a pretty bad translation from a german saying) I thought, I just build one myself!
The build
The first step was to get used skateboard decks – unfortunately I recently trashed all of mine because they took too much space. So I had to find them somewhere else – I got 5 from a local skateshop (Thanks Pivot!) but all other skateshops I asked didn’t have any. Luckily some skateboarding friends helped me out and eventually I got about 10 decks, 3 of them broken into two.
The biggest issue I had was the question how to glue the decks together. Judging from the pictures of the skate guitar guys it looked like they just use a lot of force (e.g. clamps) to glue them together. I was afraid that this might not work in my case. The decks all had different concave, and skateboard decks are pretty stiff, so bending them is not really possible! I was afraid of having too much space/gabs between the decks.
I discussed it with some friends who know about wood processing so the first idea was to cut 6 of the 7 layers to be able to bend it and create a flat sheet of decks. This didn’t really work. Even the one layer was pretty stiff and when trying to bend it broke.
In the end I decided to just use enough epoxy resin to fill the gaps – it was trial and error anyhow…
Preparing the decks
So first step was get rid of the grip tape – a hairdryer is really helpful here. Then I had to sand it – I started doing this by hand for the first two decks but then got me a tool for the drilling machine, which was a time saver.
Next step was to cut off nose and tail. Luckily I got help from a friend with the next major steps.
In between I ordered epoxy resin from amazon – so now was the time to glue the decks together. We figured out the more camps you have the better, we could have used some more but it also worked with about 8 for each package.
Decks stacked on top of each other. Nose and tail is already cut offGrip-tape removed, sanded and nose and tail cut off – ready for epoxy
Glueing
We put a good layer of resin on each deck and then placed the next on top of it. On one side we forgot to cover the surface of the first deck – so resin flowed over which we had to sand away later.
After waiting 24h the stuff was dried.
Four decks glued togetherTwo stacks of decks
Now was the big moment – we cut off one side of each package in order to glue them together – surprisingly there were nearly no gabs visible – the decks nearly fitted perfectly on top of each other!
All hail epoxy resin! This stuff is amazing!
After being surprised that we actually made it this far I started taking care of some stuff. I decided to go for a Les Paul guitar kit und use everything except the body. This set was surprisingly pretty cheap, just 89€.
In parallel I started laying out the design on the computer – I really liked the shape of the Pearl Jam guitar, the proportions worked really well. So I copied it and then did some modifications to it.
First cut
The next step was to glue the two parts together. We figured out we had to put them together at a slight angle in order to have a curved surface.
We build a construction for the router to slide in order to get an even surface. After some iteration we finally got the right angle.
Planing the side of one deck packagePlaning the side of one deck package
Combining the blocks
Having never really used a router (ok, in university one time but that’s a while ago) the biggest issue was building the templates and the guides for it – you just adjusted everything the right way, then you put the router in and boom – the routers body hits a clamp – aargh – so redo everything and start again – putting the templates and guides in the right position was the part which was the most time consuming.
We glued the parts together – again, hello epoxy resin – and after 24h it was done.
The two deck packages glued together
Cutting out the shape
Before cutting the body shape I did a test on a piece of cardboard. It looked good so I started sawing using a band saw. It worked pretty well!
The template print out placed on the decksRough cut with the band sawThe finished cut with the band sawBottom view after cuttingFirst view of whats going to be the final guitarTop view after cutting
Attaching the Neck
After some sanding we started fitting the neck into the body. For this we used a construction described in the guitar book, which worked pretty well. Again we had to do some iteration, the neck had to be attached with a small angle because of the height of the bridge.
Positioning of the template for milling the neck cut out with the router
Milling the pickup chambers
Next thing was to mill the pickup chambers. This was a bit rough, but the pickup frames cover the slightly messy work 😉
Plugging in the neck temporarilyPickup chamber guides for the routerNeck and pickup chamber
We got a bit nervous when drilling the holes for the bridge. This had to be pretty precise, otherwise the scale was off and the guitar would not be correctly tuneable.
Arrgh – I had to remove some material from the tail piece because I misplaced the two screws slightly – but it worked that wayThe bridge attachedAdjusting the neck – we installed both E strings for that
Sanding
Unfortunately as we found out later we did a mistake when measuring – the scale turned out to be too short.
After searching the net, this seemed to be the best description I could find to place the bridge.
Without having realised that we made an error, we continued in milling the chambers for the electronics and continued sanding.
Sanding completeAll millings completeMilling the electronics chamber My sanding tools on the garden table
Painting
Finally the time had come for the paint job. I had to slightly roughen the surface so that the clear coat could actually stick to it. After talking to a friend who knows how to do such things I got me some abrasive fabric and and sanded the surface very slightly without destroying the graphics.
I started painting, unfortunately, the can got empty after a first layer. So I got me another one but I should have checked the quality first. This stuff was not really nice to work with. First I nearly got a heart attack, the clear coat turned semi opaque! Luckily it disappeared after 2 days but in total it took about 5 weeks to completely dry.
Painting the guitar body – you should probably do this in a dust-free chamber 😉A stupid fly landed on the surface while the paint was still wet – grrrr!!The clear coat paint I used – I should have got me a new one, it was a can I still had – it must have been directly coming out of the 80’s – lacquering flowers with such a haircut nowadays?!?Rear, after the paint job
Holes for the cables
After about one week it was dry enough to continue working on it. I attached the neck – surprisingly it fitted perfectly, the angle was absolutely correct!
I also put in the hardware. For this I had to drill holes to connect the pickup and electronic chambers in order to do the wiring. This was a bit messy, since the cables were connected using plugs (no soldering) and those plugs needed huge holes. I had to drill multiple times.
Drilling the holes for the wire connectionThe connected wires
The bridge
Now having the guitar fully assembled it turned out to be incredible heavy! I haven’t measured it but maybe its double the weight of my strat. I started drilling some holes into the body coming from the electronic chamber. After doing some calculations, I figured out that the 5 holes I was able to drill did save maybe around 100g – so this didn’t have a huge impact 😉
Then I found out about the scale, which was too short! Ok, quick freak out… The only solution was to fill the holes and drill new ones about 5mm behind the old ones. I filled them with epoxy resin and found out that epoxy resin tends to shrink! So I added some wood paste to make the holes even and drilled the new holes. This time the scale turned out to be correct!
Filling the misplaced bridge holes with epoxy resinThe devil’s workshop – mixing the epoxy resin
Finishing Touches
The last step was to cover the electronic chambers. I wanted to have a carbon cover. I ordered a sheet on ebay to find out that you can’t cut a 1mm carbon sheet with standard tools. Ok, so I went for a 0.3mm sheet – I was able to cut this with a scissor! Installed on the guitar, 0.3mm carbon sheet feels pretty thin, a bit like paper.
Result
I’m pretty happy with how it turned out in the end. I didn’t expect that this experiment actually would have worked. As mentioned earlier the guitar is really heavy (need to put it on a scale) but the sound is actually pretty ok – at least to my untrained ears. I spare you a soundfile here, my playing is nothing to show off, same as the guitar sound 😉
There are quite a few things I would like to change during the next months. The electronic parts are actually pretty crappy, especially the volume poties, they act more like switches than poties. I also want to get some used pickups on ebay to play around with.
I also want to improve the electronics chamber. The milling we did wasn’t really precise – the template was a bit rough. The idea is to lay one out on the computer, lasercut it somewhere and mill it correctly. This way I could also save some grams.
If I would have knew that it actually works this good I wouldn’t have chosen the cheap Les Paul kit and probably would have got me a decent neck and hardware. But still I’m totally happy with how it came out.
Check out the update. I replaced the electronics hardware and did some modifications to the electronics chamber.
The finished guitarThe finished guitarThe finished guitar – Backside view, observe the carbon cover for the electronics chamber!
Guitar poti knobs made out of old skateboard decks.
I wanted to have them on my skate guitar but honestly I didn’t like them in combination with the already busy guitar body surface. So I went for standard black ones on this guitar.
Nevertheless, I really like the poti knobs. Maybe I’ll put them on some other guitar one day…
We needed a lantern for the upcoming St. Martin’s procession. It’s already a bit beaten up (it survived the several procession). This is fun and quick to make – just take a PET bottle make a cut in the lower third, squeeze the wings in, make a cut in the rear for the tailplane, squeeze it in and that’s basically it.
Around 12 years after the build of my first skate guitar I finally managed to build the second one. The build itself took me about a year due to being busy, broken bones and other things life throws at you 😉
I’m pretty happy how it turned out. It’s some sort of a stratish-type, with a tremolo and two pickups. It’s weight optimized by hollowing out the center layers of the skateboard decks. So this thing won’t break your back (like the first one did ;-).
Another quick and dirty solution. I got the idea from a friend. Mount the bike upside down. The cranks will turn while driving and it looks quite funny. Sharp turns are a no go…
This was a 5min quick and dirty project. I needed a third seat for the Urban Arrow – now. So I quickly hacked together a seat made out of an old skateboard deck. It can quickly be removed by a sliding/locking mechanism – only two screws where fixed on the bike.
In addition to my skateboard guitars I built custom pickup frames out of skateboards. In the center they have a peak to close the gap to the skate guitar body which has some sort of valley in the center.
The adapter for my dropper post lever was not available for purchase at the time so I decided to print one myself. I was curious if the print was durable enough for this application. Turns out the main adapter works great, the small nut which goes into the adapter works not so great 😉
After some rides the thread ripped off, which was something I expected. I ended up using the original aluminium nut. This works great with the printed adapter.
