A customer, Matthew Mueller, just sent me a project he has been working on making travel ukuleles with the X-carve. He made a fretboard app in Easel that lets you input in the string length and fretboard dimensions, then generates as many frets as fit within the dimensions at the correct spacing.
He uses a bit that matches the tang of fret wire so it fits right in and then cut grooves on either end of the string length to put in a 3D printed nut and saddle. His research is focusing more on music acoustics now, so the goal of this project is to test the effect that various design decisions have on the sound produced by the instruments.
In an educational setting, each student could make their own ukulele and building a class set of acoustic data to work with. He also designed a contact microphone that can be used as a pickup in the back of the instrument, or to hear the vibrations through any surface.
These kinds of projects get me really excited. You can check it out here:
