I made some using PLA which only last so long. They are for my brother in law.
He likes them to be .5mm think which is basically 2 print lines with a .4mm nozzle.
PLA is basically for prototyping shapes.
I recently got a A2L so i thought i have 2 options that i currently think of using at this time.
1 - Print them. I think i can play around with 2 variables.
Nozzle size: i think i got all nozzle sizes, .2mm, .4mm, .6mm and. 8mm
Materials: Obviously normal PLA is not strong enough.
PLA Pro or PLUS? PETG, Carbon…lots of options.
2 - cut them out. Since the A2L has a cut function, I thought i can try that out too.
I want to make picks that are .5mm thick which outs the thickness in the range the machine can cut.
Via Wikipedia: Picks are generally made of one uniform material, such as some kind of plastic (nylon, Delrin, celluloid), rubber, felt, tortoiseshell, wood, metal, glass, …
Do you think any of these materials can be cut on the A2L?
Absolutely no cf or gf filaments. Guitar picks are pretty much the worst possible application in terms of potential for the fibers working into skin.
If he’s a reasonably experienced player, he doesn’t like his picks 0.5mm thick so much as he likes the stiffness of the 0.5mm ones he happens to use, and he will be partial to certain shapes of picks as well. Find out what specific pick he uses and get one, that will be your guide for developing your design. Just making it 0.5mm thick isn’t the right approach. A small bit thinner or thicker isn’t as critical as getting the stiffness and shape right, ESPECIALLY the tip geometry.
You can tune the stiffness by changing your number of layers and orientation.
Forget trying to cut picks out using the cutter head, any pick worth using is too thick and stiff to cut with the drag cutter attachment. You’d need an ultrasonic knife, and those don’t exist for Bambu printers.
Look at actual pick materials. Nylon is common, and in this case you could probably print nylon on an A2 because the parts are so small and thin. ASA, ABS, or PC may also be appropriate materials.
I wouldn’t think the A2L cutter can do much to help here. I dont have one but It looks like a “paper” cutter not a “1mm plastic plate” cutter
omg could you imagine the 20% carbon fiber nylon pick?
“why do my strings keep breaking?”
//now I’m curious, would the CF win vs steel roundwounds?
My opinion: None at all that should be used for playing the guitar. Make it into a pendant or a piece of decor.
As CarbonForge has already mentioned: Guitarists choose their picks based on strength, and each pick has a different level of flexibility. You can’t replicate that with either 3D printing or laser cutting. The picks, as simple as they may seem, have a specific shape and unique properties.
Because of the FDM process used by 3D printers, this specific flexibility can’t be replicated or controlled at all. As cheap as these picks are, there’s actually quite a bit of expertise behind them. Same problem with laser cutting.
I can’t show them all here, but here’s just a small sample to give you an idea of how precise these things are. In addition, there are various materials.
A thickness of 0.5 mm is probably not enough. I tried it with PETG Basic at a thickness of 0.7 mm. That worked quite well. I’ve chosen a layer thickness of 0.12 mm, 3 wall loops and a rectilinear top and bottom surface pattern.
The wear resistance of PETG is, of course, significantly lower than that of nylon, for example. Nevertheless, the pick should remain playable for a reasonable period of time.
