jer7440

Dave,

I apologize if I misunderstood the intention of your post. I've been in plenty of online discussions with "Hand made" zealots, and I tend to react negatively when I am told I don't have skill because instead of a router and template I use and cnc machine. After rereading your post, I can see that wasn't necessarily your intention.

So anyway, sorry for being a smart A$$ about the neck. It seems like I posted step by step how I did it, but I would have to look back in the thread to know for sure. If I didn't I'll throw something up.

Gorgeous guitar man! Really clean work.

Are you running a 4-5 axis machine? Looks like you have an undercut on that headstock where the lower corners (next to teh nut) are orthogonal to the headstock and not the machine z-axis. Lucky dog.

As for all those out there who want a CNC of their own: it's a crutch for many people, but it's not as easy as you think it is. Yeah the accuracy and repeatability are fantastic, but having now gone through a build by hand with templates, files, and coping saws you can do just as well by hand with some care. Unless you want to make an aluminum guitar, it's not really that much better than some real skill. However for those lacking "real" hand-on skills.... it's a nice crutch.

Furthermore, for all those out there who are going to "build one," you had best really really read up on it. You think making ugitars is tough, try ing making a CNC machine. My roommate, whose IQ roughly doubles mine (and I'm not as dumb as I sound), is building one using a grizzly desktop mill and this is NOT a project for the faint of heart or low of technical skills in electrical, mechanical, electromechanical, and programming/coding. Unless you want to build one from a kit, just forget it. You don't have it in you. Remember what they always say: if you gotta ask...

-Dave

P.S. One of my best buddies in college NC-machined crave top and back bottom plates for a LP out of aluminum and sandwiched them around a mahogany core. Looks badd-arse and sounds pretty dang good. Bright and sustaining, but the mahogany mellows it out, takes off any twang or harshness. But mostly it looks tight. He left the ridge height pretty large and decided the as-machined look was pretty gnarly and opted not to sand it down. Very "metal."

Well seeing as you seem to be infinitely smarter than everyone else here...I will let you figure out the undercuts on that neck. I will tell you this though, its only a 3 axis machine.

As for those of you thinking about building you own cnc...GO FOR IT! I wouldn't let this guy or anyone else tell you, "you aren't smart enough" What an arrogant thing to say. I guess I will hobble off on my crutch now and contemplate my own ignorance, and lack of hands on skill.

Hey

I have a Haas cnc mill at my work. (Family business.) I use mastercam for my design and programming. Here is a link to my in progress thread.

My CNC LP

It's kind of been a slow project...but it's coming.

Nice! I'm a cnc guy too. I look forward to seeing what else you come up with.

Sorry to bump and old topic, but...I getting ready to bind my LP and I have exactly what setch talked about. All of my binding needs to be 1/4 inch tall except for in the cutaway where is is almost 7/16. Does anyone make a 7/16 tall binding in a color other than cream. I would really prefer something in black or white.

Tofly,

I would be interested in some exchanges. What have you got? I have all my files on my computer at work, so I won't be able to get to them until Mon. I have to admit that my MC files are kind of a mess. Things aren't very organized. I understand what's going on but I created it. I might be able to clean it up before I send it. I'll have to see how much time I have.

That's pretty cool! Some time ago, someone on the MIMF made a guitar of contrasting woods only the joints between the different wood were all dovetails. That was a beautiful guitar

Wow really sounds great! Nice work

Check out this place.

rescue pearl

If you click on "reconstituted stone" in their menu, they have a couple of different red stones. These materials are designed for inlay.

Tim, that is a great looking model. With the LP there was no way to drive a surface like you were talking about. I had to create patches for each different section.

Hey Rat,

Its' been a couple of days since I checked in here...sorry for the delay. I tried a ton of things to create the carve for my LP. I finally ended up making a bunch of individual surfaces. I'm not sure how familiar you are with surfaces, they are a little different than solid models. Surfaces a created by creating a 3d wireframe, or the 3d boundary of an area. If you look at the lower bout area of my LP, it is made up of 2 surfaces. One on the left of center and one on the right. The boundaries for each surface are the center line, the outside contour of the guitar and a horizontal section that creates the top of the surface. The thing is, none of these boundaries is flat. The vertical center line looks flat from the top view, but from the side it is a curve that runs from the high point of the carve down to the outside edge of the guitar. This is really hard for me to explain without some kind of visual aid. If you still have questions I can take some screen shots from my drawing or I might be able to make you a .stl or Iges file. Let me know

How much previous electronic experience did you have before you built this? How hard was it? Did you buy a kit from some where?

cool thanks!

Please post pics and clips!

So were your finish colors all sprayed as a toner vs. directly dying the wood?

Hey Chris,

What micron bags did you get on the DC?

Just to clarify your process for the natural binding...you dye the whole top and then scrape the color off the edge?

Hey man nice top!

Thanks! It's nice to have that out of the way. It just needs a good sanding now.

Here is another quick update. I carved the top today. Everything went as expected this time

Lookin' really nice. The only problem I see is you built it backwards!

Any idea where to find the black super glue?

I'm doing some inlay into ebony and I want to use black epoxy. Do any of you color regular epoxy with ebony dust? Does anyone, other than StewMac, sell black epoxy?

Hey! I'm finally getting back to this project...again It's been kind of a long year with my wife having surgery 3 times (one emergency) and 2 little kids...yada yada yada.

Any way, I started working on my fret board inlays and here is a pic of a couple of the pieces.

I found the shape in some clipart on a tattoo site. I grabbed the JPG and a friend of mine vectorized it for me. I scaled it to size in Mastercam and started cutting. Here a a couple of the cavities

cavities

I did make one screw up though. I was using a 24.75 scale layout and the board I got from stew mac was laid out to 24.562. Anyway I have a couple of fret markers that will be off center. Oh well next time I will slot my own board.

Very nice!