Paul M
Forum Replies Created
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thank you @giulianonicoletti ! I’ll chew on that for a while. Much appreciated.
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Actually tbh I don’t know how you could do a longer path on that bridge profile. Project include would just do what you already had.
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gotta say though, fillet looks pretty darn good.
One thing I’ve sort of excepted is that my design is going to change somewhat to make it CAD/CAM/CNCable. Stuff that might be hard by hand is super easy on CAD, stuff that is easy by hand can be very difficult on CNC.
So I’m ok with either
1) Leaving enough extra material to do handwork that would be really hard with CNC
2) Modifying my design a little to make it work well with CAD CAM CNC.
Just saying those sharp corners are going to be difficult. Not impossible. Also one way or another you’re going to have to go in with a chisel, can’t machine those angular corners with an end mill unless you get into some super hanky multi plane milling.
Fillet picture is attached.
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But I would say no. I think you want to start with stuff close to 1″ in general. 15/16″ or thereabouts. 3/4″ even if you pull it off is going to be stressful. You want some extra meat so you can properly flatten the fingerboard area, etc.
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When I’m sourcing my own neck blanks I usually look at the stewmac site and more or less copy what they are selling for neck blanks dimension wise. .
Stupid but it works.
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The R M Mottola guitar building book has the best info on hand bending I’ve seen. A very systematic approach. It was helpful to me.
One thing he talks about is getting the area that you want to bend hot and then sliding it forward, so you are bending it when it’s not in contact with the iron, simultaneously you’re warming the next area you’re going to bend, so its a sort of slow fluid motion.
Also he shows you how to mark your sides for the bends in a really systematic way.
His approach is sort of idiosyncratic but it was worth it if only for that.
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Seems like maybe a pickup swapping and basic adjustment workshop might appeal to a lot of people.
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Some of those prices are pretty reasonable. I’ve been looking for some Port Orford Neck Blanks for a while…
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I don’t have any experience with this but there’s google voice that I think can give you a parasite phone number on your own phone.
https://voice.google.com/u/0/signup
voice.google.com
Google Voice gives you one number for all your phones, voicemail as easy as email, no charge US long distance, low rates on international calls, and many calling features like transcripts, call blocking, call screening, conference calling, SMS, and more.
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For cutting templates out of MDF I think a CNC would do a pretty great job and be more useful than a laser. I could see a laser being cool for that too but CNC can do a lot of other useful stuff too.
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I have a OneFinity and while the machine itself is great, the controller is garbage and the company has been really awful to deal with. I do not recommend them. Which sucks because it’s a well designed machine but dealing with these people has been bizarre.
My 1F has a 48″x32″ work space and while it takes up a large part of my shop, any smaller would be annoying. I could maybe to 32×32. But it’s helpful if you want to leave fixtures on the workspace that you’re not crammed in.
I think it’s also important to be rational about how much time investment is involved. Personally the learning curve was super steep. I went with Fusion which may or may not be less user friendly (the problem therein is that usually people are only trained in one software and I think have a hard time comparing anything to the one they used) but regardless, I probably have a solid 4 or 5 months of just fucking around before I was able to do anything constructive.
If you are making guitars, I HIGHLY recommend you do a simple Fender style electric build first. I went with some acoustic guitars and the models were pretty byzantine by the time I was done. I will have to go back and fix some stuff. Part of the learning process I think. But I just did an electric on the CNC and it was like I was barely working.
I would be interested in an Openbuilds machine if I was starting over.
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I think if you were trying to sweep around that upper bridge line and hoping it will go passed the sharp corners, that’s a no go. I think you’d have to put planes at angles at those corners and then put sketches there and sweep those. Fusion wants a specific single line path to follow (I think).https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R2kgC6hlpvD2FpLvPhGTRpqcloUVO3iN/view?usp=drive_link
For some reason when I did the sweep on cut, it didn’t separate the bodies. So I couldn’t actually delete the waste part. Fusion sucks with little errors like that.
I was able to revolve the sketch around the front plane, but it’s not a consistent curve so probably not the look you’re looking for although it looks pretty nice I think. THere’s some shmutzy stuff right where your sketch is, not sure what’s going on there, could be a processing error, looks like 20 seconds of hand sanding to fix.
Just a strong suggestion: constrain your sketches as you go, either with dimensions or parameters. It makes a huge difference as your models get more complicated.
OK UPDATE
So the reason I couldn’t get the cut to work was because your belly radius profile didn’t intersect the top corner of your profile. So it was cutting, but it was cutting INSIDE the bridge, so the cut wasn’t visible. I lifted your profile up a tiny bit above the bridge so that it was fully overlapping the bridge and then I could do the cut.
I’m not sure exactly how you want to handle that sharp corner. If you’re looking to make those radiused also, you’ll need to do planes on those angles and add another profile there and sweep along.
THe other thing is if you want the sweep to go all the way to that corner, you’ll need a path that is on that bridge corner line but goes a little passed it. I think you could do that that with project include.
Let me know if that makes sense.
As far as constraining sketches, it would help you here. Basically you’re trying to connect everything to everything else. Your Belly radius sketch isn’t attached to anything, so it was missing the top of the bridge profile. If you had the bridge profile projected into that sketch, than the cut would work without adjustment.
It’s a really nice piece of work though, really good job.
Oh just another suggestion, for symmetrical shapes like this, mirror works really well. Then you only have to constrain one side and it keeps the dimensions to a minimum.
Hope that helps a bit.
First picture was the revolve, 2nd picture is the corrected sweep (with nasty nibs…that would be 2 seconds of sanding…)
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My bench top is oiled MDF. I’m leaning towards just using that with no buffer. There’s something that feels weird about not putting something down but I can see that all the other options have flaws.
One thing I learned from Sergei Dejonge was taking a really stiff scraper (he makes them out of bimetal automatic hacksaw blades) and running it over your bench top before you work. It is sort of a simultaneous glue bugger detector and destroyer.
Thanks for the thoughts.
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That Laguna looks pretty sweet. In that price range I’d consider AVID also. Tool changer would be pretty amazing. Lotta money though.
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Ian, I vaguely thought you went to the foam cutters are you still going with the resistance heaters?
I am probably way clumsier here than I should be but I think these foam cutters are maybe too fragile for my clumsiness.
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I think this stuff has a reputation of going bad fairly quickly? Like 1 year or less.
<div>Not sure fridging it would help but probably wouldn’t hurt?</div>
