MIDI Glockenspiel

So I have been inspired by a post over at NerdKits where they made a solenoid actuated glockenspiel. Quite impressive, and I figured why not have a go using the roboduino arduino board.

If things work out well, what I hope is to be able to have the glockenspiel play using the MIDI output from my You Rock Guitar MIDI controller. Am looking into getting a dedicated shield to aid this.

A couple of little proof of concept videos, the first is testing out the shift registers required. I opted for 74HC595 8 bit registers which have a latch function.

The next is of a solenoid I made striking a test note which the tuner on my phone tells me is approximately a D#.

Fretboard supplies.

I am beginning preparations for work on the fretboard!

I purchased 4 x 2 ft lengths of medium gauge fret wire from stewmac.com they had very good service to Australia. The folks at Maton Guitars were kind enough to bend it for me. I wasn't too keen to undertake that job myself.

I have also bought a piece of 10mm 5083 aluminium plate for the fretboard itself. Am a bit concerned about internal stresses at the moment, the plate has a fair bend in it to begin with which I might press out before machining. And after machining who knows what will occur. Some more thought I think.

Am also planning on making a small sample piece to test the size of groove that the fret wire will press in to. I have bought a couple of 0.508mm (0.02") end mills which I was planning on doing the job with, the fret wire tang measures .75mm in width so I might need to take a couple of passes. It occurs to me the barbs on the fret wire tang was not designed to be pressed into aluminium, so some experimentation is required, I bought plenty of wire for this reason.

I also must finalize the CAD and CAM. More about that later, along with some info on the VMC I'll be using to do the machining. Also I am still to work out how I will fixture this part to machine it.

Initial Thoughts

For some time now I have been working on an aluminium guitar design. There is a lot of information out there on guitar building, and it is heartening to see I am not alone in exploring non-traditional methods.
I have found a lot of inspiration in the material I have read online, and now that things are starting to come together somewhat in my design, I thought I should add my experiences to the wealth of online information.
Well that is the plan anyway.