Stu.

A bit of progress on the LP from the last couple of weeks.

Fingerboard is slotted, routed for inlays, and tapered. Next steps are to radius, glue inlays in, and bind.

Inlays just resting on the pockets, otherwise I’d never get them out again.

Shaping the tenon for a Les Paul neck with the little shoulders is absolutely the worst!

Are you going for a 4º neck angle and then 2.5º pickup plane angle?

That finish is super cool! It kind of reminds me of the intro sequence to His Dark Materials, showing the universes stacked together like threads. 

Well, the new process seems to work! It certainly makes a change from fiddling to set up guides and panicking. I think that I’m now in the wrong thread, but I’m closing the loop from my previous couple of posts.

Not necessarily related to this build, but I  recently bought the Elevate Truss Rod Slotting Jig Plus. I wanted something to take the stress out of routing for the truss rod and gluing the fingerboard on. It’s a pretty cool kit which covers routing the truss rod channel, drilling alignment pins, and drilling dots - all based on a self-centering jig. The only issue is that it’s designed for acoustic truss rods, so I’ve been prototyping some alignment pins for repositioning further up the neck. I’ve also taken inspiration from @Lumberjack’s thread and tried to make a router template to use the same bit and bushing as the rod jig. Also heavily inspired by @ADFinlayson’s jig with an alignment strip.

All better now!

It always seems to happen, right? As much as I didn't want to have cocked up the drawing, I also really didn't want my CNC to be out of calibration or giving me gremlins. Especially since I spent a couple of hours yesterday just calibrating the X steppers across the length of a fingerboard. They had a tiny error at 100mm, which compounded and put around 2mm onto the scale length. So yeah, happy to have been wrong with my drawing here!

You guys are far too kind. Hopefully it all fits together in the end!

The string through holes in the body wandered slightly, so I made a small string block to hold the ferrules and basically cover up my mistake. After about two hours of work, I popped the ferrules in and noticed there was an error in my drawing

I’ve fixed the spacing of the final hole now and no prizes for guessing my task for tomorrow…

The wenge should match the heel block.

Oh, and I’ll also be making a router template for the pocket!

A bit of progress on the neck carve today too:

18 hours ago, JAK said:

Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you mean. With the texture of the top it’s a bit hard to tell the smoothness of the carve (looks like it’s getting pretty close in most places, but maybe there’s enough roughness adding to the “uneven” lines still?)

I, too, generally like clean lines but oh man, let me tell you - the way the veneer blends so well with the spalting and then paired with the walnut looks superb. Especially in the bottom pic. It’s like a live edge - a tree that grew into a guitar (and the walnut then being the pseudo-bark binding). Looks like a happy accident to me! 

There's definitely some roughness keeping the line from being sharp. I'm finding that the veneer just looks too wide if I include it in the shallow part of the curve, but if I try to keep it thin it's actually quite brittle and splinters. I'm either going to have to sand it to hell and back to avoid chipping, or run a router cutter around to give a clean edge. It's a shame to lose connection to a project, so I'm hoping it returns later!

Glad to see you're still alive! The build is looking great so far!

15 hours ago, ScottR said:

Yeah, I'm stunned. This has gone way past your blue jeaned guitar.

SR

Thanks, Scott! My favourite thing about it is that it works!

22 hours ago, MiKro said:

I would try some more sanding then another layer of epoxy. Use a heat gun or electric hairdryer to heat the epoxy once applied to eliminate bubbles in the epoxy.

just my 0.02 cents worth.

MK

This was my first thought too. It just looks air bubbles, which you can avoid by:

• Don't pour immediately. Let the mix sit for a while to give air bubbles chance to rise and pop
• Use a heat gun to blast the surface (keep it moving). This will pop air bubbles near the surface and also lower the viscosity so that deeper air bubbles rise quicker/easier to pop.
• If you're really fancy and have the spare cash, some people will use vacuum chambers to draw air bubbles out and then re-pressurise to force epoxy into the work.

The epoxy will also scratch and gum-up quite easily if it isn't totally set and rock solid - particularly difficult if you're in a cold climate.

22 hours ago, curtisa said:

I see you've...vandal-eyesed...your machine.

This response made my evening yesterday. Cheesy little puns and jokes are the best!

This CNC is working well so far! I’ve managed to get my fingerboard mounting jig sorted, started cutting some MOP, and finished by adding some personality.

I've just flicked back and spotted the scales on the truss rod cover. Such a neat detail and nod to the design language of the bass!

5 hours ago, Crusader said:

Interesting build! and did you say Motorbikes?

1985 XR600 and 1988CR500

 

My dad used to ride XRs back in the 80's and has always been pretty obsessed with them! There's something about those rugged beasts

We have a spindle/router and test runs are good! I don’t have any means to measure the runout, but it looks very stable and cuts like a knife through butter. The other motors had at least 0.5mm of runout.

The working area is enough for a normal guitar body (non-spiky) and 25.5” scale fingerboards.

7 minutes ago, MiKro said:

@Stu., I do have a question for you. Did you use metal inserts in the wood to screw down the linear rails and bearing blocks?  I have a friend, whose son  is wanting to build a Plywood CNC after seeing yours. Something I told him about last year was an option and keep cost down for now. DUH!! LOL!!

MK

Ha! That's always the way.

The linear rails are just held in with 3x20mm wood screws - I'm hoping that with screws every 25mm, there will never be enough weight on a particular area to pull them out. I guess we'll seen how that goes! The bearing blocks are just held in with 10ga screws. I didn't go too crazy, because they're supported well in Z and Y, and then both sides of X are supported by the gantry and linear rails. It all seems to be holding for now, but threaded inserts might be needed in the future.

7 hours ago, henrim said:

Looking good. I think I have found a neck shape I like the most and I just would like to repeat it in different woods/materials. I have been thinking about building a cnc myself but when I choose components the cost always creeps beyond commercial entry level systems (shapeoko and likes). Plywood frame could be the thing to get me started. Quick, inexpensive and most likely accurate enough to rough out necks. Although lately I have been thinking about just building a router sledge for that purpose.

Thank you! Check out the BooTec video series for some inspiration: It's a really straightforward design and definitely DIY/hobbyist ability level.

The real cost here is from the linear motion parts - the linear rails and ballscrews are quite expensive, but they're very solid. The ballscrews are very smooth and have absolutely no backlash, which is a huge upgrade compared to the T8 leadscrews I was using before. I did some research on stepper drivers and went with a slightly more expensive unit (DM556) for each motor, because I'd read about the cheaper drivers missing steps, overheating, and whining. I also didn't both with limit switches. I tend to just zero near my workpiece and then execute within a small area.

1 hour ago, Mr Natural said:

wow. seriously impressed. I dont really know much about CNC- but I am impressed with this so far. Cant wait to see what it can do. Great job so far man.

bravo. 

Kind words, thank you!

Hopefully I can run the first operations after mounting the spindle tomorrow. I calibrated yesterday, so should be good to go and fingers crossed!

6 hours ago, MiKro said:

Good for you on this build, at least you used decent linear rails and ball screws to start with. The Ply frame will give good service for wood working and also will give you a chance to really evaluate the CNC need and usage.  The accuracy may suffer some  due to the ply but with wood should be of no real problem. Make sure the Ply is sealed well even though it is painted.  Kudos!!!

ps I would move the electronics though as wood dust will get to it where they are  now.

MK

Thanks, man. I do have a piece of ply to place over the top before adding a spoilboard, but you’re right and I will be monitoring the dust. Cooling might be an issue too.

The 775 motors and ER11 collets in my inventory have awful runout, so I’ve ordered the equivalent of a Makita RT0700C with an ER11 on the armature. Speeds up to 30k RPM, no need for a power supply, and an accurate ER11 system with warranty.

And we have a neck! I’ll sand the top face nice and level tomorrow. Still plenty of meat on it for the neck taper.

Also, fingerboard prep!