What started as a hallway conversation at Sinclair Community College turned into a creative collaboration that blends engineering, music, and musical theater.
James O’Rear, a lab technician at Sinclair, spotted Gary Minyard of Dayton Live and pitched an unexpected idea, building a guitar. Minyard wasn’t looking for one, but he mentioned Dayton Live’s upcoming production of Back to the Future: The Musical at the Schuster Center. That detail helped shape the project.
O’Rear brought the idea to his colleagues in Sinclair’s STEM Guitar Lab, a program that teaches hands-on skills in manufacturing, machining, electronics, and physics through guitar building.
The lab usually produces guitars for classrooms across the country. This time, the team decided to create something fully custom.
They started like any guitar builder would, selecting wood, shaping the body, and carving the neck using a CNC machine, a computer-controlled cutting tool. From there, they added show-specific details, including a “Back to the Schuster” logo designed and engraved by O’Rear.
Minyard had one major request, a working DeLorean-style digital clock built into the face of the guitar.
“I wanted it to feel a little more sci-fi than a normal guitar,” Minyard said. “Instead of the pickups where you’d normally strum, I wanted the digital clock from the DeLorean right there.”
To make that happen, the team carved new cavities into the guitar body and 3D-printed custom parts to hold the screen and wiring. O’Rear also programmed a microprocessor that connects to Wi-Fi and updates the time automatically.
The electronics take up the space where pickups would normally go, which means the guitar does not actually play. It was designed as a display piece and quickly became a crowd favorite.
Minyard brought the guitar to his pre-show talks during the musical’s run at the Schuster Center, where audiences gravitated toward it.
“I think it got more photos than the Back to the Future step-and-repeat,” he said. “I had no idea it would be that popular.”
While students did not build the guitar themselves, the project reflects the kind of hands-on, creative learning the STEM Guitar Lab aims to promote. O’Rear said pairing technical concepts with something familiar and fun helps students connect with STEM subjects.
“Geometry can be dull. But guitars are cool. If you can bring those two together, it might be enough to get a student interested in something they hadn’t paid attention to before.”James O'Rear, Sinclair STEM Guitar Lab Technician
For Minyard, the collaboration shows how technical education and the performing arts can support each other.
“This was a great opportunity for Dayton Live to partner with Sinclair and shine a light on that work,” he said. “Hundreds of people saw it.”
The guitar now hangs in Minyard’s office, a reminder of what can happen when creativity and engineering come together.
