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Production-worthy Picks

A project log for Adaptive Guitar

An electro-mechanical system designed to allow a disabled musician to play the guitar with one hand (and a foot).

joeJoe 09/04/2017 at 05:320 Comments

One of the goals of the project is to take it into full production. That means picks that can be precision-replicated, and easily replaceable.

The first versions of the picks were fully captive on the pick axle, which meant you had to slide everything off of the pick bridge to replace a single pick. The latest version snaps into place on the shaft. The outline below shows the main axle snap feature (bottom left), and the control rod snap feature (top left).

I also replaced the music wire springs with custom-designed, laser-cut leaf springs. They're made of spring-tempered bronze, and will be over-molded into the production picks.


Here's a line drawing, showing how the spring is placed in the pick body:

I designed multiple variants of the leaf springs, each with different stiffnesses. Heavier gauge guitar strings get stiffer leaf springs. This way, you're low E string volume sounds the same as your high E string. The leaf below is stiffer than the one above.


Here's the overall dimensions of a pick:



Of course, I had to try it out. I bought a desktop plastic injection molding machine from LNS technologies:

https://www.techkits.com/

...had a mold made:


And here's the final product! These are as good as production-ready:

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