On 1 July 2026 FabLab hosted Željko Šimunović, who came with the idea of making a template for an electric guitar – a personal project based on the Fender Telecaster.

Željko brought along his own material and a prepared guitar design. Together we went through the project and weighed up the fabrication options in order to choose the technology best suited to the dimensions and the requirements of the material. Because of the limited working area of the available CNC machines, we decided to use the AtomStack A70 Pro engraving and cutting laser.

Before any work on the machine, the digital design had to be prepared. From the existing drawing we extracted the elements needed for the template, tidied them up and adjusted them to the right dimensions.

Digital preparation was followed by testing. We first tried the design on old pieces of wood to make a prototype and check the settings before working on the final material. The first attempts revealed a few problems, which we then corrected before adjusting the preparation again.

Once everything was ready, we laser-engraved the design onto the material Željko had brought. Rather than cutting it out entirely with the laser, he chose to cut the template by hand, following the precisely engraved lines.

This personal project is a nice example of the process that often precedes the final build: from the initial idea and digital preparation, through choosing the right technology and testing a prototype, to adapting the procedure based on the results. It is exactly this kind of process that lets ideas develop gradually, be tested and be turned into concrete projects 🙂