BC3 class builds guitar, hopes to expand product
BUTLER TWP — To attract students to his technology classes, all professor Mike Aikens has to do is pick up a guitar and play.
The hollow body acoustic/electric guitar was built by his product realization class at Butler County Community College this semester — and it works.
When he takes it to trade shows, he attracts crowds. When he talks about it, people get excited. And when he hooks it up to the amp in his office, everyone stops by.
"People are genuinely interested in guitars," he said. "Even people who don't play are interested."
The guitar has become his medium to teach science, math, engineering and technology. With a grant from the National Science Foundation and a consortium of other community colleges and Purdue University, Aikens and associate professor Mike Robinson plan to expand the curriculum in a class next spring. In that class, each student will walk out with a guitar.
Steve Courson, a computer-aided drafting technology student who recently graduated, said building the guitar was more complicated than he thought it would be.
"There's a lot of little stuff," he said.
He said to have a good-sounding guitar, all the parts must be accurately designed and made.
"Otherwise, you just have a pretty-looking guitar," he said.
Aikens, holding detailed CAD plans for the guitars, explained the distance between the frets must be accurate to 1/1,000 of an inch.
Students do get a chance to add their personal touch to guitar parts, though, and Aikens said that adds to the draw. The sound hole, the bridge and the peg board all have opportunities for creative customization.
The students didn't finish their individual guitars, but they did create models with a rapid prototype bought two years ago with grant money. Those designs were taken to Butler Senior High School, where a laser cutter burned the design into a hardwood guitar front.
Sandy Norris, a CAD technology student, has a son in the Pennsylvania National Guard, so she created a sound hole of a sillouhetted soldier saluting, a bridge that resembles the badge of Guard, and added the Guard symbol on the neck joint."I think (another professor) expected flowers or something from the only female in the class," she said.Courson put a large spider as his sound hole. Another student used the icon of Halo 3, a popular video game.John Heffelfinger, who gave his guitar a Yamaha flare, said the only restriction on the design of the sound hole was the area.The finished guitars sport the BC3 logo at the sound hole.It also has a preamp — the electronic guts — that was designed by associate professor Denton Dailey and his classes.Next spring, the plan is to have each student build one of the finished guitars in a semester.The 2008-09 year will be the third the college is part of the NSF grant. Others sharing in the grant include Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., Fox Valley Technical College in Appleton, Wis., and Mott Community College in Flint, Mich.Community colleges in Illinois and California will join, and the consortium will be a regional resource center for the project.Other colleges in the consortium worked on guitars, but not to the extent BC3 did, Robinson said."We're on the leading edge," he said.As a center, Aikens is looking to partner with local high schools to build parts for the guitars. For example, he said, if a high school had a CNC wood router, it would help the college students cut fret boards and get the high school students involved in the project.In the third year, Robinson said he will also focus on outreach by holding workshops and going to conventions to show off the guitar. Recently, he and Aikens took the guitar to events in Pittsburgh."We were kind of the hit attraction,"he said.
