There has been a constant effort to amalgamate technology with design to create musical gadgets of superior quality. One such effort saw the birth of a 3D printed guitar at the Griffith University, Gold coast, Australia. Adrian McCormack, a third-year student of the industrial design course worked for 40-60 hours of CAD designing and 200 hours of 3D printing to eventually give this guitar its shape and form. Out of two pieces, one was made in the university campus and consisted of 7 parts, and had a unique feature called ‘hot swapping’ which gave the guitar its red and white color. The other guitar was manufactured as one single piece by the Belgian company called Materialise. Its body was made of polyamide which is a bio- compatible material.
This innovation was possible under the guidance of Professor Dr. Jennifer Loy, Queensland college of Art, Griffith University. The students gave their innovation a material form at the Guitar shop in Paddington with the help of Brisbane guitar technical expert Rohan Staples. It was a one to one collaboration where Rohan was simply awestruck with this seamless technology of 3D printing; on the other hand, Adrian benefitted from the technician’s expertise which helped retain the originality of the guitar.
The effort of the professors at Griffith University is to mobilize these specialized courses of Industrial design and 3D Design Digital Media so that more and more students opt for such interesting courses which are set to change the shape of many industries in future.

Source: 3ders.org