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Machining a guitar on a CNC

This article is about how I’ve made a guitarbody on my CNC machine. The drawing of the guitar was done in Fusion360.

I started with getting the right dimensions for the pickups and tremolo. To be sure this would fit right I made a testpiece on MDF. It is just a piece of 15mm thickness, but it gives a good idea about dimensions and makes it easy to testfit everything. It is a double sided milling job; I wanted to get the rear part correct as well (the part that hold the springs and create the free space the tremolo needs). You can see the holes on the side of the stock, these are for the the dowels when I flip the part.

The CNC machine took 25 minutes to do the front and about 35 minutes to do the rearpart. I programmed that the last job that would cut out the outer shape , to leave some tabs to hold it steady while doing so. This I could sand down by hand later on.

I screwed down the block of wood, the stock, firmly on to the scrapboard after first having made the flip-dowels. The job of the front starts off making these holes again for when it’s time to do the rearside.

 

As you can see the ‘steps’ are clearly visible, these will be sanded later. The steps are 0,5 mm thick; perhaps I could make the steps smaller but that that would also increase the job time considerably. I’ve used a 6mm flat bit, 2 flutes, 32 mm long; next time I’ll try the ballnose 6mm. You can clearly see the tab on the side, doing it’s job perfectly.

Now it’s time to sand the body. I used a sidegrinder with a sanding piece on it to do the rough work; the steps and the tabs. I used a normal sanding machine to do all the sides, top and fillet curves.

That’s all for now, now it’s time to do the neck, more on that later!

519 Total views: 4 Views Today
{"cc_re__cc_re__cc_by_sa_4_0": [">\n\t<li><a href='http://www.audiohotshot.nl/2014/12/'>December 2014</a></li>\n\t<li><a href='http://www.audiohotshot.nl/2014/11/'>November 2014</a></li>\n\t<li><a href='http://www.audiohotshot.nl/2014/09/'>September 2014</a></li>\n\t<li><a href='http://www.audiohotshot.nl/2014/07/'>July 2014</a></li>\n\t<li><a href='http://www.audiohotshot.nl/2014/06/'>June 2014</a></li>\n\t\t</ul>\n\t\t</aside><aside class=\"widget-6 last widget\"><h4 class=\"widget-title\">Creative Commons License</h4>\t\t\t<div class=\"textwidget\"><a rel=\"license\" href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/\"><img alt=\"Creative Commons License\" style=\"border-width:0\" src=\"https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-sa/4.0/88x31.png\" /></a><br />This <span xmlns:dct=\"http://purl.org/dc/terms/\" href=\"http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Sound\" rel=\"dct:type\">work</span> by <a xmlns:cc=\"http://creativecommons.org/ns#\" href=\"www.tdgproductions.nl\" property=\"cc:attributionName\" rel=\"cc:attributionURL\">TDG Productions</a> is licensed under a <a rel=\"license\" href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/\">Creative Com", "textwidget\"><a rel=\"license\" href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/\"><img alt=\"Creative Commons License\" style=\"border-width:0\" src=\"https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-sa/4.0/88x31.png\" /></a><br />This <span xmlns:dct=\"http://purl.org/dc/terms/\" href=\"http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Sound\" rel=\"dct:type\">work</span> by <a xmlns:cc=\"http://creativecommons.org/ns#\" href=\"www.tdgproductions.nl\" property=\"cc:attributionName\" rel=\"cc:attributionURL\">TDG Productions</a> is licensed under a <a rel=\"license\" href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/\">Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License</a>.<br />Based on a work at <a xmlns:dct=\"http://purl.org/dc/terms/\" href=\"www.audiohotshot.nl\" rel=\"dct:source\">www.audiohotshot.nl</a>.<br />Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at <a xmlns:cc=\"http://creativecommons.org/ns#\" href=\"www.tdgproductions.nl\" rel=\"cc:morePermissions\">www.tdgproductions.nl</a>.</div>\n\t\t</aside>\t\t\t\t\t<!-- END Sidebar -->\r\n\t\t\t\t\t</div>\r\n\t\r\n</div>\t<!-- Footer -->\r\n\t<div id=\"footer"], "copyright__copyright__copyright": ["d also increase the job time considerably. I\u2019ve used a 6mm flat bit, 2 flutes, 32 mm long; next time I\u2019ll try the ballnose 6mm. You can clearly see the tab on the side, doing it\u2019s job perfectly.\n\nNow it\u2019s time to sand the body. I used a sidegrinder with a sanding piece on it to do the rough work; the steps and the tabs. I used a normal sanding machine to do all the sides, top and fillet curves.\n\nThat\u2019s all for now, now it\u2019s time to do the neck, more on that later!\n\n519 Total views: 4 Views Today", "d also increase the job time considerably. I\u2019ve used a 6mm flat bit, 2 flutes, 32 mm long; next time I\u2019ll try the ballnose 6mm. You can clearly see the tab on the side, doing it\u2019s job perfectly.\n\nNow it\u2019s time to sand the body. I used a sidegrinder with a sanding piece on it to do the rough work; the steps and the tabs. I used a normal sanding machine to do all the sides, top and fillet curves.\n\nThat\u2019s all for now, now it\u2019s time to do the neck, more on that later!\n\n519 Total views: 4 Views Today", "d also increase the job time considerably. I\u2019ve used a 6mm flat bit, 2 flutes, 32 mm long; next time I\u2019ll try the ballnose 6mm. You can clearly see the tab on the side, doing it\u2019s job perfectly.\n\nNow it\u2019s time to sand the body. I used a sidegrinder with a sanding piece on it to do the rough work; the steps and the tabs. I used a normal sanding machine to do all the sides, top and fillet curves.\n\nThat\u2019s all for now, now it\u2019s time to do the neck, more on that later!\n\n519 Total views: 4 Views Today", "d also increase the job time considerably. I\u2019ve used a 6mm flat bit, 2 flutes, 32 mm long; next time I\u2019ll try the ballnose 6mm. You can clearly see the tab on the side, doing it\u2019s job perfectly.\n\nNow it\u2019s time to sand the body. I used a sidegrinder with a sanding piece on it to do the rough work; the steps and the tabs. I used a normal sanding machine to do all the sides, top and fillet curves.\n\nThat\u2019s all for now, now it\u2019s time to do the neck, more on that later!\n\n519 Total views: 4 Views Today"]}