GuitarEng

If you are just interested in CNC as a hobby then build one yourself. If you are interested in it as a tool, then buy one. If you can take a block of wood and turn it into a neck in 1 hour (profiling, headstock contours, tuning peg hole drilling, and carving), then don't waste time with CNC! It would be hard to make a similar argument against CNC for inlay. One-off's are pretty easy if they are truly one-offs. You have to design everything at some point...and if you have your CAD skills down then modifying existing drawings and making code from them is pretty trivial. For metalworking, you need a CNC mill, not a CNC router. Unless you can afford something suitable for both (i.e. a used Fadal for between $25 and 50k) then you will need to chose one or the other. You definitely don't want to do metal working with a K2. I use Fadal's at work and I have a K2 at home. CNC is the way to go for me...but I have 15+ years of CAD. If you aren't up to par on CAD then that is the first step. I pretty much do CNC all day, most days, let me know if you have any questions. G-Eng

I can also CNC cut pretty much anything you would want within reason. Send me a sketch and I'll send a quote. G-Eng

I thought some of you might get a kick out of my latest design. I'm looking for comments both positive and negative...lay it on me! I designed everything using Rhino CAD and then cut the parts using my CNC machine. Here are some pics: Peace, G-Eng

I use ebony...oh yeah...the CNC machine helps out a lot with this... -G. Eng

You're really just inviting a headache if you make a single piece guitar...mainly due to wood movement. If you do attempt something like this, I'd recommend using something fairly stable such as mahogany or rosewood. As for tonal differences due to adhesives...I think that's stretching it. There is absolutely no such thing as perfect tone..it's completely subjective. I would really doubt that a .002" thick layer of glue really affects "tone" (however you define it) to any appreciable degree. There are a TON of things that matter way more than how thick your glue line is. My advice is to worry about those things. That's my .02 G-Eng

I've always understood that you need mass to get good sustain. Pick the heaviest block of wood you can find and that will sustain the longest.

Ditto on what Mattia said - take your time and do the design right. Draw it all out with the right angle & everything..

You'll probably see me advertising on here before too long. All of those things have been in the long term plan... In the meantime, let me know if I can help you out with anything!

Yeah...it's cool stuff. I'm looking to start running a lot more stuff soon. The wife tells me I have to actually make money...apparently I promised something along those lines at one point...

Thanks for the compliments! I cut it on my CNC - I have one of the K2 Machines. I did all the design & surfacing work using Rhino & ran my toolpaths with RhinoCAM. I didn't have any bookmatched wood laying around...and I thought it looked cool having the pieces flipped (the top wood pieces are sections from the same board)...the swirl on the top opposing the swirl on the bottom, etc. I was going to go with much more standard F-holes and did this one on a whim. I've seen some other f-holes done per the grain lines..and this is my first go at doing it with the CNC.

Here's the latest body off my CNC machine..it's a Semi-Hollow Singlecutaway design with the F-Hole designed to mimic the grain pattern. The body has a 2 degree taper between the top and the back and it has a nice rounded carve transitioning from the top to the sides. Oh yeah...the back is a single piece of Mahogany and the top is Black Walnut. Let me know what you think..here's a pic of the body with the top wet down...

I would think that rosewoods and ebony are used for their stability and strength. It probably doesn't hurt to have some weight to the bridge either. Rosewoods and ebony are pretty stiff...if they were more flexible, this would probably steal some energy from the strings instead of transferring the energy right to the soundboard. I think there would be some obvious problems with using a softer wood for a part like this...over time & under load, the part would deform due to the string tension & load across the saddle.

I'll CNC cut them if you want....I can do rounding, slotting, profiling, and do any inlay routing you may want as well....Message me if you are interested.

I've got a K2 3925 machine and it is repeatable to within about .002. This number includes all sources of error from all 3 axis. I highly recommend it...it is good for "slower" production work. The main limitation is the size of the spindle (which is a 3.25 HP porter cable router)..and the flexibility of the frame. Even so, it is definitely faster and more accurate than doing things by hand. The compucarve thing is not geared towards inlay...or really any other parts of guitar making. A machine like the compucarve is controlled via stepper motors whereas higher quality machines make use of servo motors. Stepper motors only move in certain increments..and when they wear out they miss steps. The machine controls position of the axis by counting how many pulses it sends to the motor. The servo motors on my K2 have optical encoders...they constantly feedback their position to the controller PC. For anyone who is interested in getting into CNC, I highly recommend you download a copy of Rhino CAD software. If you get to the point where you are comfortable with CAD, then you are ready to go to CNC

one last thought to add to fryo's would be that you probably aren't going to drastically change the way the instrument sounds if you 1) build it out of normal woods 2) build to pretty standard dimensions 3)brace it using a standard pattern and 4) put the sound hole in a normal spot. You gotta play big to win big..if you're only making $1 bets, it's hard to strike it rich! And even then...there's always the possibility that the time tested designs we all play today are pretty darn close to an optimized design...