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Laser cutting a fretboard and possibly a bolt on neck
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Laser cutting a fretboard and possibly a bolt on neck
I have access to a nova thunderlaser 5-something and I saw a video of somebody cutting out a fret board as well as the fret slots, as well as an entire neck out of a blank with a laser cutter, and I’m wondering if this is a reasonable thing to do and if anybody has experience with the kind of shrinkage that would probably happen with such a deep cut in the neck blank. Any insight at all is greatly appreciated. Thank you!
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3 Replies
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Ive never heard of someone cutting something that ambitious, but it sounds like it would be worth a try. I personally want to find out if you can cut the fret slots with a laser.
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Well, technically you could.
Don’t know what level of knowledge you have about laser cutting, but to make a quick summary, laser cut in a sort of V shape. So first thing I would do about cutting a fretboard is to place a spoilboard under it cause you have to cut through it in order to have parallel sides on the fretboard. That’s of course unless you just want to rough cut it, let’s say with a 1mm overhang before gluing then flush trim it with a router bit.
About fret slots you can definitely do it. But consider that you can’t do it with 1 single passes cause you would need too much power and the wood will burn. However lowering the power require multiple passes, which burn the wood anyway. So…
About the whole neck I assume everything above is valid too, same principle, just thicker wood.
For what I know, Tom Anderson cut pickup pocket etc with the laser on some of their model after the body is buffed out. So as said, with some practice and test, you can definitely do it.
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Belated reply — I really struggled with maintaining verticality on my cuts when I did my first guitar with help from one. The fret slots were very V shaped you’d need to clean them up manually.
Luckily for my inlays I was using resin and black sand so it was easier to fit things, but they had a similar trait and a solid inlay material would be a hassle. I also struggled with charring when going thicker, which was a relatively thin layer, but I’d be planning to sand or flush trim a bit anyways.
On darker hardwoods it’s worse and can really burn to the point it’s out of spec, another student at my high school had that happen, but even just on maple I had to try twice after the first one really cooked the wood in ways I didn’t want. You also have to account for the thickness of the cut, which can be unpredictable as the heat spreads and burns away the material. (Or in plastic, melts.) It’ll have a nominal value that is quite thin, but it can and will shift depending on what you’re doing.
I think it’d work really well for a quick and dirty start tho — a line to cut to, some lil dots for brad point bits, and a starting line for fret saws so you don’t need a template/calipers/etc. You can also always engrave a headstock plate then fill it with resin or gold leaf or something, like this build.
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