Autodesk Inventor 3D Printed Guitar Pick

This 3D printed guitar pick is completely customizable to fit any playstyle or experience range. The design is simple yet delivers the same quality of popular guitar pick brand names. This guide will walk you through how to design this pick template as well as possible options to fit your personal playstyle!

Supplies

You will need:

-Autodesk Inventor is most recommended, however any other platforms that you can replicate this design with will work just as well.

-Access to a 3D printer as well as a way to export your design to it.

-Guitar for testing your pick!

Step 1: Foundation (Part 1)

Start by beginning a sketch on any plane, preferably the (XY) plane. Begin by laying out a foundation for our design with a straight line tool, as shown. The line dimensions should be a height of 1.26 inches and a width of 1.1 inches. This can be changed if you're more familiar with pick dimensions that you like. When laying out the foundation to the pick, start by placing a straight line from the center point of the plane and go upwards 1.26 in. About 2/3 of the way up that same line, create 2 more lines forming a cross shape, each going 0.55 inches left and right, creating your 1.1 in cross.

Step 2: Foundation (Part 2)

After step 1, go into your line tool and select "Spline: Interpolation." This will bend around your lines to form a pretty generic pick shape. You can get weird with the design by adding more lines or by changing the dimensions of the lines, which can get your pick a thinner or wider face. Feel free to mess around with it. Use the line to click on the end of the vertical line, connecting to the side line, and mirroring the actions on the opposite side of the center line.

Step 3: Shape (Part 1)

From here you can edit the main point you used by changing their bend angles. Take these squares that flare out from the point and drag them anywhere, you'll see that it alters how the lines bend. Use this method with the very bottom point of the pick, and define the sharpness to your liking. preferably as shown in the second image. Go ahead and delete the inside lines so that the perimeter of the pick is left.

Step 4: Shape (Part 2)

From here, we can finish the sketch and move onto the actual 3D model itself. Go ahead and leave the sketch and use your extrude tool. You'll wan to model your extrusion after a guitar pick's thickness. If you're not sure what to make it, a thinner pick typically used for strumming ranges from 0.6mm to 0.7mm. A medium thickness pick for overall guitar playing ranges from 0.71mm to 0.85mm. A thick guitar pick, for those who want total picking control, should aim for anything above 0.85mm. Use these measurements to extrude your foundation into a 3D object, which can be refined later.

Step 5: Refining

Now that we have the basis of our pick, we should slope the perimeter so that it plays smoothly in your hand. get your fillet tool, or whatever slopes an edge, and select the outer perimeter of one side of the pick, whatever the thickness you made it, do half of it as the measurement. So if it is a 0.8mm thickness, go for a 0.4mm slope, so that it can be mirrored on the other side. Now it has a proper shape to it!

Step 6: Details (Optional)

By now the pick is complete. You can feel free to go ahead and start to print it to see if it fits you well, or needs adjustment. However, if you want to get creative, you can add basically anything to the face of the pick. This could be grip texture, a design, your name, and so much more. if you want to add things to your face, go and use the sketch tool and click the face of the pick to start adding more things. From here, you can design or shape anything extra that can help you play or just look cool when you hold it. Do whatever you please from this point on, the pick is complete!

The second image is an example of the thousands of things you can put on your pick!