Have you ever wanted to custom design your own electric guitar? Well here is your chance. Design and model your very own custom parts to attach to a Zoybar electric guitar hardware kit.

Official Press release

We are very excited to launch a new collaborative contest with Zoybar and Shapeways. This contest represents the first hardware integration between a mass production product and mass customization of user made applications. Within ten working days you can hold your own custom guitar and hardware features that were originally designed from your home computer!

In order to promote Open Hardware/Software we have initiated a contest with the prize of two electric Zoybar guitars along with the fabrication of the winning hardware design by Shapeways. Musicians, designers, animators – professionals and amateurs, are all invited to design original hardware features that can be incorporated with the Zoybar instruments and enter a contest to win their creation.

Who, What, Where & How

Zoybar is an open R&D Lab for academic, hobbyist, and commercial developers to easily create music instruments and applications. Zoybar also provides fully produced hardware kits for those who are more interested in experimenting with these new instruments physicality. For this challenge however you don’t need to buy anything! Zoybar`s unique open R&D model provides access to both hardware and production files for further customizations and development by the end users themselves. Zoybar`s 3D CAD production files are available to download for non commercial use and can be used to design new hardware features on many 3D modeling softwares, including Blender.

Shapeways is an online manufacturing platform for physical objects. Designers upload their design files to the Shapeways website, they print it and ship it to any destination you choose. Shapeways is using a technique called ’3D Printing’ which has proven itself as a high-quality production technique, but up to now has always been very expensive.

Blenderart Magazine was started for the Blender community to provide quality learning content from the efforts of the community itself. In addition to providing community contributed educational content, Blenderart Magazine promotes and encourages the use of Blender software in innovative and creative endeavors.

Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License.”

For more information about this contest visit: http://www.zoybar.net/The%20Zoybar-Blender-Shapeways-Challenge.html

General Overview:

The Challenge:

Design original hardware features that can be incorporated with the Zoybar instruments and enter a contest to win your creation.

Timeline:

The competition will start on August 05, however submissions will not be revealed before August 22 and will continue until September 20, 2010.

The competition will end on October 05, 2010

The prizes:

Function category prize (Open to all): A Full Zoybar Guitar or Bass Hardware kit provided by Zoybar, plus 3D print of the winning design entry in the amount of $200 (USD) provided by Shapeways. Total Value: $870 (USD)

Fantasy category prize: (Exclusive for Blender users only) A Full Zoybar Guitar or Bass Hardware kit. Valued: $670 (USD) provided by Zoybar.

The winners will be announced in Blenderart Magazine’s 30^th issue.