Smashing guitars on stage is like a ritual for rock stars, just like Swedish-born guitar virtuoso Yngwie Malmsteen. Sandvik presents 3D printed smash-proof guitar, it’s an all-metal, unbreakable guitar. Malmsteen was allowed to unleash his smashing skills on it. This project goal was to design a guitar that is unmashable in different ways you can smash a guitar, the main challenge was the critical joint between the neck and body that usually cracks on a guitar.

Therefore, Sandvik enginners eliminated join between the neck and body, they decided that guitar’s neck and fretboard were milled in one machine from solid bars of recycled stainless steel. This unique construction had never been tried in a guitar before. The neck and freboard are both extended into a rectangular hub, it would reach deep into guitar’s body.

3D Printed Smash-Proof Guitar from Sandvik features titanium body in layers. It was pretty challenging to manufacture the guitar body with an extremely complex design due to the need of high strength at low weight. Sandvik relied on its world-leading expertise in metal powder and additive manufacturing, the company chose to 3D print the guitar’s body. Lasers traced a design in beds of fine titanium powder, then fusing layers of material one on top another. These layers, each thinner than a human hair, built up to create the body of the guitar.

Once this guitar was finished, Sandvik gave it to Malmsteen to play and smash. After playing several songs, Malmsteen started to swing it at stage structures, amps, and floor, yet this guitar stands still.