HELP !! Tilt back Guitar neck with VCarve Pro

[Macguitar]

Guitar Neck Tilt back headstock



by macguitars » Tue May 03, 2016 11:44 pm
Another newbie kicking the tires of CNC milling. I recently purchased an X-carve to test the CNC water, looking to see what might be possible in my small guitar shop. well that just wet my whistle and now I am looking at a Laguna IQ. To start with I wanted to be able to offer more consistent neck profiles. I have been hand carving since 1977 and although I am pretty good at it you can never put the wood back so CNC, now that they have become more affordable, seemed like a good way to go assuming my CAD work was usable. Now that I have proven the drawings with many hours of cutting air and or wasting tons of wood to get to the actual geometry surface I have been on the hunt for CAM program that would be able to mill a tilt back headstock. by that I mean be able to setup the CAM to do both the heel, radius, and the angle without having to try and reset X,Y,Z 0 when a new job has to be loaded. Perhaps separate jobs the run consecutively. As you can see I don't know exactly what I am talking about but something like that. The CAM software always sees the stock block as the full X,Y,Z, I have attached a JPG of the model and the stock ( sort of ) to hopefully show what I am trying to accomplish. Vcarve Pro seems interesting and would afford a good deal of additional flexibility, I am using the trial version at the moment Hoping that this will be the right package to do the necks as well as lots of other things
All advice appreciated

Thanks in advance




macguitarsVectric Apprentice Posts: 2Joined: Mon May 02, 2016 3:10 pmModel of CNC Machine: X-Carve Soon Laguna IQ

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[plcamp]

Guitar Neck Tilt back headstock



by macguitars » Tue May 03, 2016 11:44 pm
Another newbie kicking the tires of CNC milling. I recently purchased an X-carve to test the CNC water, looking to see what might be possible in my small guitar shop. well that just wet my whistle and now I am looking at a Laguna IQ. To start with I wanted to be able to offer more consistent neck profiles. I have been hand carving since 1977 and although I am pretty good at it you can never put the wood back so CNC, now that they have become more affordable, seemed like a good way to go assuming my CAD work was usable. Now that I have proven the drawings with many hours of cutting air and or wasting tons of wood to get to the actual geometry surface I have been on the hunt for CAM program that would be able to mill a tilt back headstock. by that I mean be able to setup the CAM to do both the heel, radius, and the angle without having to try and reset X,Y,Z 0 when a new job has to be loaded. Perhaps separate jobs the run consecutively. As you can see I don't know exactly what I am talking about but something like that. The CAM software always sees the stock block as the full X,Y,Z, I have attached a JPG of the model and the stock ( sort of ) to hopefully show what I am trying to accomplish. Vcarve Pro seems interesting and would afford a good deal of additional flexibility, I am using the trial version at the moment Hoping that this will be the right package to do the necks as well as lots of other things
All advice appreciated

Thanks in advance




macguitarsVectric Apprentice Posts: 2Joined: Mon May 02, 2016 3:10 pmModel of CNC Machine: X-Carve Soon Laguna IQ

VCarve-Pro certainly can perform this function, however, you need to note that multi sided machining operations may be required to reach targeted areas considered as an undercut in any particular view. Choose your starting side carefully.

[louieatienza]

You're looking to carve the neck using your roughed-out blank as the stock model, to eliminate as much air-cutting as possible? Not with VCarve Pro. That's more in the domain of higher-level CAM packages costing about 4-10 times what VCarve Pro costs. I carve necks on CNC though they are Strat style with flat headstocks. I do most acoustic neck carving by hand, but setting up to do with CNC...

[Macguitar]

Yeah the strat style neck are fairly easy. I am still carving the acoustics and electric tiltbacks by hand. I have seen the task accomplished in MACH3 via cnclutherie.com tutorials but what small guitar shop can afford it. just trying to track down other real world solutions. I am picking up a Laguna IQ which should help with the accuracy and resetting I have been toying with Meshcam as well running a multi job solution seems possible but resetting my X-carve accurately has been problematic hence the upgrade.I have a friend running Rhinocam be he tells me he just hogs out the stock ( too wasteful for me ) so the search continues

[plcamp]

Yeah the strat style neck are fairly easy. I am still carving the acoustics and electric tiltbacks by hand. I have seen the task accomplished in MACH3 via cnclutherie.com tutorials but what small guitar shop can afford it. just trying to track down other real world solutions. I am picking up a Laguna IQ which should help with the accuracy and resetting I have been toying with Meshcam as well running a multi job solution seems possible but resetting my X-carve accurately has been problematic hence the upgrade.I have a friend running Rhinocam be he tells me he just hogs out the stock ( too wasteful for me ) so the search continues

If it were easy everyone would be doing it.....good luck

[Macguitar]

Yeah I get that :-o

[Jon.N.CNC]

You will have a hard time getting vcarve to do that. Fusion 360 however can do it with ease.

You don't necessarily need to model the stock to avoid air cutting, Infact is this even possible? just trick the cam into believing the stock block has already been reduced to actual stock by creating an operation that does so. You then use rest machining with all of the real operations and when it comes to post process you just process the operations after the virtual op.

Not possible with vcarve obviously.

Fairly basic stuff really, and doable with free software

Good luck

[louieatienza]

Yeah the strat style neck are fairly easy. I am still carving the acoustics and electric tiltbacks by hand. I have seen the task accomplished in MACH3 via cnclutherie.com tutorials but what small guitar shop can afford it. just trying to track down other real world solutions. I am picking up a Laguna IQ which should help with the accuracy and resetting I have been toying with Meshcam as well running a multi job solution seems possible but resetting my X-carve accurately has been problematic hence the upgrade.I have a friend running Rhinocam be he tells me he just hogs out the stock ( too wasteful for me ) so the search continues

The other issue with carving a solid billets is you end up with short grain right where the neck is weakest, requiring face plate and possibly back plate.

[pshupe]

Why not just do it at the CNC level? Setup your fixtures to have markings to zero out multiple times to cut individual pieces of the neck. I just purchased a new CNC machine and I can set multiple origin points. That way you can run your neck carve program from one start point then run your headstock and/ or heal block program with the second, and / or third origin point. My machine has a Machine working point, then you can set a number of workpiece working points. You may want to see if the Laguna IQ can do the same thing.

Cheers Peter.

[Macguitar]

Yea, That's pretty much what I did, but using RhinoCam. I did the headstock tilt on a separate layer and when I did the first toolpaths I hid the headstock so that in the first setup the stock would only see the thiner section of the neck, then in the second set I his the thin portion.Then when I toolpathed the tilt with a new stock size. all work originates from the same X,Y,Z "0" . of course my CNC is not here yet so at this juncture it's theory but it looks good frim the simulation, We shall see

thanks for the input

Why not just do it at the CNC level? Setup your fixtures to have markings to zero out multiple times to cut individual pieces of the neck. I just purchased a new CNC machine and I can set multiple origin points. That way you can run your neck carve program from one start point then run your headstock and/ or heal block program with the second, and / or third origin point. My machine has a Machine working point, then you can set a number of workpiece working points. You may want to see if the Laguna IQ can do the same thing.

Cheers Peter.