Decades-Old Custom Guitar Scanned

By on January 24th, 2011 in Usage

Tags: ,

Imagine designing amazingly intricate, one-of-a-kind electric guitar bodies years ago – and now wishing you could document your work while you still can. 
 
Then Imagine trying to produce a detailed 3D model of the guitar shown in the image here – with conventional measuring tools. Yep, you’d be there a very long time, and it definitely wouldn’t turn out well. In fact, low-end optical scanners couldn’t even do the job properly. 
 
Enter GKS, who provided high-precision laser scanning equipment. Their equipment can scan as many as 75,000 points per second at a resolution of as low as 0.005mm. after three hours of scanning. they had a monstrous amount of data describing all the nooks and crannies of this groovy item. But that wasn’t the end of it: they had to do another three hours of model cleanup to produce a tidy 3D model suitable for printing on a CNC machine. 
 
After half an hour on the CNC machine, a duplicate was ready – made of a “rare mahogany wood”. Evidently 36 copies are planned. 
 

By Kerry Stevenson

Kerry Stevenson, aka "General Fabb" has written over 8,000 stories on 3D printing at Fabbaloo since he launched the venture in 2007, with an intention to promote and grow the incredible technology of 3D printing across the world. So far, it seems to be working!

Leave a comment