AUTOMIZED GUITAR STRUMMER
The final project for my Product Design course was to design a motion system that has multiple degrees of freedom, and to create a product prototype with integrated mechanical and electrical components. With a team of 3, including myself, we began to break the assignment down by considering daily typical uses, and whether or not those daily uses can be machined and programmed so that it can complete the task on its own.
We decided that a hobby worth looking into is guitar playing, so then the question was: how can we create and program a machine that can play the guitar on its own?
Given that we only had limited materials (8020 aluminum extrusion bars, two stepper motors, and belts/pulleys) to create 2 linear stages, we began the design of the product by establishing the support of the machine, and where those supports would go. Afterwards, we thought of where our step motors would go, and how the end piece would attach to one of those step motors. Our initial designs are seen below:
We realized that our initial end piece design (seen as the top right image) would not work since there is no way of moving the vertical 80 20 bar (since the bar is fixed to a 3D piece on the other end), so we came up with a new end piece that would attach to the smaller motor. With the new end piece designed, we were able to complete a physical prototype:
After completion of the prototype and further, we saw that for the most part, everything did indeed work. The belt was able to rotate due to the rotation of the larger motor. As a result, the vertical bar was able to move back and forth between the strings. Our end-piece also did work as a result of the smaller motor. With the rotation of the smaller motor, we were able to lift and lower the pick (to simulate finger picking).
If we were to continue working on this project, there would be many small tweaks to it. Firstly, we would establish a better way of holding down the guitar. An issue we came across was that our coding program would not work every time, and that is due to the changed position of the guitar. Since we are only working with a few millimeters as a margin (between each string), any sudden shift of the guitar would completely throw off the result of the code. We would do this is two ways. First, we would bring the front bars closer to each other so that it can have a stronger grip towards the top of the guitar. We would also have to balance the guitar, since we found out that the underside of the guitar is curved, so occasionally the pick wouldn't be able to actually strum the string.
Ultimately, there is room for plenty of improvements. I hope to one day be able to complete at least the strumming portion for the guitar, so that any guitar player can simply place their finger as to make a chord, and the machine take care of the rest.