I have spent the past year dreaming about getting my own electric guitar, so I was considering for my final project making one! I was originally a bit nervous about making my own just because I feel that it would require a lot of precision to ensure that it actually works well and sounds good. However, it is a semi-common project, so it's definitely not impossible, there is some existing work that I could look at, and one of my friends, Z Chen, has made one, so it can be done. It would also be cool to make my own headstock and generally put my own spin on it.
Idea #2: A self-tuning guitar stand
As a spin-off of the guitar idea, I was also considering making a stand that could tune the guitar for you, such that it would always be tuned when you pick it up. I've watch a bunch of "learn to play the guitar videos", and all of them warn about not paying enough attention to whether the guitar is actually in tune as a beginner. As such, if I made a guitar stand that always kept itself in tune, it would likely make it a lot easier for me to practice and ensure that the guitar remains in tune.
Paper sketch of a self-tuning guitar stand
CAD-ing
Nevertheless, I mainly just ended up CAD-ing a guitar itself in Fusion360. For reference, for my workflow for this assignment, I used a sketch of an Ibanez guitar to base the outline of the guitar. Starting from there, I was able to CAD the guitar pretty quickly, making sketches and extruding for the pickguard and pickups. I then used sheet metal and folded a piece to make the tremolo. Working from a sketch worked fine for this week, but I would like to note that if I would actually like to make this project, then I would definitely have to use an actual guitar as reference. Simple questions like "how thick should a guitar be?" were questions I really needed answers to in order to CAD accurately, but for the purposes of this assignment I just estimated.
Screenshot of Electric Guitar in CAD
9/20 update: in a turn of events I've acquired a guitar so it's back to the drawing board!
