CNC Fretboard Inlaying - I Did It.

[aussiegazza]

Spent an hour this afternoon scanning my inlays, tracing the pic in V24, setting them out for a 25 inch scale and testing the G Code.

So easy to do, I will never do manual inlaying again!

The one crosscut in the ebony is the nut position I will use as a reference point to manually cut the fret slots. I will look at machining them in the future.

Pic of the test cut and final cut in ebony:



Only need to chisel the points to finish.

Garry

[aussiegazza]

I am sure that many of you do pockets like these the same way, but for Newbys like me, here is my approach:

1. I centred them up the Y axis (ie X zero), so that I did not need to worry about the width of the fretboard. I just zeroed the X axis on the board's centreline.

2. I made the top of the fretboard 'Z Zero'. I then did not need to worry about the exact thickness of the fretboard.

Other techniques:

1. Scanned the inlays and imported them via Bobart.

2. Traced around them in with four Interpolated Splines each, making sure that they connect (or BobCAD will not create the toolpath).

3. Drew a rectangle to the size of the fretboard centred on the Y axis (there is a dropdown box to do this in one go);

4. Calculated the fret position offsets from the nut end in Excel, Simple to do for any scale (found in a book, but is everywhere on the net).

5. Used Lines/Parallel in V24 to draw the fret positions offset from the bottom of the rectangle (ie the 0 fret).

6. Broke up the whole drawing using Utilities/Break/Many

7. Placed a Point 'Entity' at 50% up the side of the fretboard on each of the lines. This will give me the centreline for the inlays

8. Drew a line a lot longer than the width of the fretboard (so I can easily select them later to get rid of them) from each point

9 Dragged (Utilities/Translate) each inlay outline onto the 'cross' created by the Y axis and the above centrelines

10. Rotated the inlays slightly as some were not correctly aligned using Utilities/Rotate

11. Dragged (Utilities/Translate) each rotated inlay outline onto the 'cross' created by the Y axis and the above centrelines

12. Created the pockets and also the Profile on the outside of the 0 Fret. This gives me a reference point to cut the frets manually. I will get the correct dremel mill and do them on the mill in the future.

I used a dremel 3/32" mill bit with an adaptor for my router. Both came from StewMac.

If you put the different drawing elements into their own layers, you can easily hide them and this makes selection of the ones that you want (eg during the creation of the pockets) so much easier.

The V24 pic for reference:



Garry

[ssoptical]

Nice work, Sounds like a lot of messing around to get the end result.

[aussiegazza]

Nice work, Sounds like a lot of messing around to get the end result.

Actually it is very little effort. CNC ensures that the inlay is properly centred and oriented correctly. Also very fast to do compared to tracing the outlines and manually routing. Also makes for VERY tight tolerances over manual (at least when I do manual...)

Can then do them again and again. This is where the effort really pays off.

Garry

[FermanD]

Looks GREAT. I am considering getting a CNC and was wondering if it could cut for inlays. Did you buy individual inlays or a stock and cut them yourself? I will need to come back to this info when I go to set up.

Thanks

[aussiegazza]

Looks GREAT. I am considering getting a CNC and was wondering if it could cut for inlays. Did you buy individual inlays or a stock and cut them yourself? I will need to come back to this info when I go to set up.

Thanks

I buy my inlays from the dominicartinlay Ebay site. I cannot buy the MOP for the price they make them for. I assume that they are using a water jet to cut them, they are so accurate.

Garry