3-D printed Les Paul

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My project was to take a deeper look into the feasibility of 3-D printing as a reliable alternative of manufacturing. Doing so I rendered a Les Paul guitar in Uni-graphics, took that rendering and made design tweaks to accommodate my 3-D printer.

Once the parts were printed I had to prep them for assembly, once prepped I began gluing the pieces together to form a guitar. Once the glue was set I began attaching the neck, bridge and all wiring.

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I was inspired to pursue this project from a friend who was obsessed with guitars, the 3-D aspect was my obsession with recent developments in the different uses of 3-d Printing such as 3-d printers that print a house using concert as the medium, and gun companies 3-d printing fully functional firearms.

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Many hoops had to be jumped through to finish this project, funding for printing material ($650) had to be sourced. Engineering a design that could be printed on a 6”x6” base and the assembled without losing any structural integrity was difficult task in and of itself, the torsion between the neck and the guitar body caused buy the strings was something I feared would be the collapse of this project.

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Thanks to the engineering staff and classmates, we were able to arrive at a suitable solution. Wooden dowels glued into the individual pieces using gorilla glue gave us the support needed to unify the body. Giving us more support than is needed, but it is better to error on the side of caution.

This projected gave me and a few of my classmates a hands on view of problem solving in a real world application, it gave insight to us on what engineers had to deal with and allowed us to think and debate to find a reliable solution.

 

In conclusion this project gave me firsthand experience of how engineers use deductive reasoning, problem solving skills and most importantly, gave me the insight that 3-d printing may not ever replace manufacturing, however it is extremely useful when it comes to prototyping

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