Guitar Tuner Cutaway
7x scale model of the machine head on my tanglewood acoustic guitar, sliced in half to show the threads and gear mechanism
250mm x 250mm x 250mm
Many parts were turned from tooling board on a machine lathe
These parts utilised laser cutting technology as well as complex operations with a lathe and drill press
It took a lot of sanding and filling to make the parts look truly seemless
3D printed threads were inserted into the model
Some small complex parts were 3D printed
The chrome finish caused me a lot of problems as I had never used it before this
The chrome finish was very finicky, but I learned a lot about how to use it for the future
This model was made as part of my second year at COGC. The brief was to design and create a model that represented a cutaway for a real-life object. I chose to recreate the guitar tuners on my acoustic Tanglewood guitar. I measured the individual parts to create digital models and assemblies of the object. This allowed me to experiment with slicing the model in different ways to find an interesting cutaway. I ended up cutting it on a plane that ran the length of the tuner shaft, perpendicular to the worm gear. Many different techniques were used to make this mode, including laser cutting & etching, turning, shaping between profiles, SLA and FDM 3D printing and vacuum forming.