Official Luthiers Forum!

Don,
Did you morph your machine from a set of plans or start from scratch? I have been crusing the Zone specifically looking for plans of a machine using 80/20 material and nearly every one I have found plans for is built of wood and pipe.

_________________
tim...
http://www.mcknightguitars.com

Don, I'm really enjoying seeing you put this machine together. It is giving me all kinds of ideas to use on my own mill. Keep the pics rolling!

_________________
Reguards,

Ken H

Tim,

You'll have to do a search for threads by SteveSpo to find the basis for my machine. Luthier Steve Spodaryk's design. I've had many opportunities to view the machine up and running, and it is quite a nice machine. I think if I had to do it all over again, I would do a couple things differently, but in general it's a good machine. I drew plans for mine in BobCad based on Steve's machine, with a few minor design changes of my own, so I have been working off plans from that sense. A few things have changed here and there as it progresses, like the thickness or size of a plate, or the layout of the holes in it. That sort of morphs as you're doing it as you realize "there's a better way" or you discover it's going to "cause you grief later on if you do it this way".

I can certainly send you .dwg file of the plans if you want them.

I'm actually designing a new one that's a bit smaller than mine, but would be ideal for a lot of small-shop luthiers. The idea of selling kits of the things has crossed my mind, since the design is pretty good, and the experience of building one gives great insights into the design process. If I did such a thing, all pre-machined parts and components would be included, but the person would have to assemble it. This gives the DIY kind of person an opportunity to have the fun without all the hassle of hunting down the parts. Not sure yet. If I could price them somewhere between the imports and a K2 and make money, I would consider it.

Ken, I'll try to take more pictures tonight. Most of the progress is pretty minimal right now, as I'm in the stage of making more plates. Right now, it's a plate for mounting the spindles on the Z-axis.

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Well, I'm *almost* done with the spindle mounting plate. All the holes are drilled out, and pretty much exactly where they're supposed to be. That's a really good thing because these holes are tapped, and that means there's not much room for error.

Here's some pics:

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Don, This is looking really great. Can't wait to see it finished!

_________________
Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

I had wondered how you were going to mount the spidle and the router as well, and I see how you are doing it now. Well done! I may have to consider something like this as well since it would eliminate having to change mounts all the time.

Keep the pics coming!

_________________
Reguards,

Ken H

Thanks. Me too!

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Thanks Ken. If you look closely at that plate, you'll see that I built some height adjustment into the mounts. I can lower the router mount an inch or so to level the table, then put it back up for normal usage. I went a bit overkill on making the mini-spindle mount adjustable, forgetting that the spindle easily slides up and down in the mount.



Still, it was pretty easy to make the plate. Only took a few hours to lay out and drill and tap.

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Well, this weekend was very productive. In spite of celebrating my wife's birthday and Easter both, I managed somehow to get both the front and rear plates of the base laid out, drilled out, counterbored, and tapped. Everything seems to fit like a glove. I also tapped about 30 other holes over the weekend as well. Man, there's a lot of tapping to do! One thing I quickly have discovered is that I built the bench for this way too high. I'm going to have to lop off about 4" from the bench height. What a pain. At least the cnc isn't together yet. It's mostly disassembled right now, except that I have part of it together to do some measurements for some odds and ends.

Pics:

Notice that I had to route a 3mm deep circle out of the aluminum for the motor mounts. Steppers come with a 2.875" boss on the face, and you have to machine a pocket for it to sit into. That would have been a lot easier with the cnc than with the hand held router, let me tell you! You will also notice that I had to level the plate for the motor mount. Aluminum plate comes in extruded plate and cast/ground plate. The ground stuff is crazy expensive, so I had to go for the extruded stuff for these plates. The problem with extruded plate is that often it cups slightly, just like flatsawn wood will do. Not a terribly big deal to rectify, but it needed to be done.

Please enjoy the pictures!

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

The more I see of this, the more I am liking what I see. Looks like it will be quite light weight, but very rigid at the same time. I like the idea of the extra pocket for the vertical milling as well.

_________________
Reguards,

Ken H

Ahhh...don't be fooled by the word "aluminum" when it comes to weight. This stuff is heavy! This thing is going to weight a few hundred pounds when all is said and done. Sure, if i were steel it would be quite a bit more, but it's still heavy.

I took some pretty strong measures to make sure it was rigid, including doubling up on the plates that hold the two sections of the gantry verticals together. The horizontal part is made up of two pieces of 1530, (1.5"x3") that are bolted together for rigidity. They will also have a couple plates on the back to increase the stiffness, not that it needs it.

If you notice the picture with the ballscrew, you will see that a bearing pillow block is left floating unsecured by the end. It is going to be hanging on a shelf, but I needed to assemble this to make the shelf and get it located properly. There are some things you just can't do by the drawings, they need to be custom fitted. This is one of those things. I'll get both of the shelves made, then everything will get disassembled for the big bench shortening. I think this is the last component to be manufactured before I can go to final assembly.

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

It's truly amazing how quickly you can take a bench apart and shorten it by six inches when it's made of 2x4's. Tonight I made the decision to lower it so that the surface of the cnc is lower and at a better working height. I had to disassemble a good bit of the base, and box up everything that was on the bench, move everything off of it and the shelf below, remove the cnc base, remove the two sheets of mdf, and then take each of the legs off one by one and shorten them by six inches. The nice thing was it gave me the opportunity to tweak the level of the bench, which sagged a wee bit under the weight of itself and the aluminum sitting on top. Now it's pretty much dead on across the whole thing. Well, not surface plate level, but pretty good. That's probably not a bad thing. Anyway, the whole operation only took about two hours start to finish. Now to make the hangers for the base ballscrew pillow blocks, and I can start assembling the cnc.

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Hi Don,
Seems you're off to a great start!

Check out http://www.precisebits.com for a boatload of great advice on shell cutting with cnc. Ron, the owner, frequently answers the phone and is extremely generous with both time and advice.
Pay attention to the tutorials. Worth their weight...

Paul

_________________
Paul Bordeaux
http://www.bordeauxinlay.com

Hi Paul,

Thanks...much appreciate the encouragement. Building a cnc can be a daunting task. I'm finding though that it looks like it's harder than it actually is. It's amazing that you can accurately drill holes in aluminum plate on a drill press that you typically use for wood. A chop saw with a good carbide blade made for cutting non-ferrous metals works fantastic too. As long as you're careful with your cutting, go slow and be accurate, you can have pretty good results. I'm hoping to get 75% assembled this weekend. We shall see...but I fear my day job will interfere.
My goal is to have this up and (hopefully) running by May 1.

I will definitely go to PreciseBits for my inlay bits. From what I hear, they're the best folks to deal with. Thanks for that info!

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Paul--Wow! Thanks for the update on Precisebits.com. This is interesting stuff!. I've been using their bits for a couple years now and kind of shooting in the dark on feeds and speeds. The purists would probably like to slap our hands for engraving script in pearl but we don't want to get mired down in that argument, right?
Nelson Palen

You can say that again!
(But gimme a cnc instead of a jeweler's saw anyday!)

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Well, here are some pics of tonight's progress. I started assembling the base, and it is at about 90%, and as far as I can go until I make the hangers for the ballscrews. The gantry is on the bench to help achieve the "looks like a cnc..." look. Next I have to disassemble the gantry, add the 1/2" plates that connect it to the linear rails on the base, and then assemble the whole shootin' match.

Enjoy the pics....

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

I cant add much to what you already have said and done, but I did want to let you know I am still paying attention andloving the look of your mill. Keep up the good work!

_________________
Reguards,

Ken H

Hi Ken,

Thanks much... I'm kind of at a place where it's a lot of small work that doesn't show what looks like a lot of progress. Some of it is really tricky too, like drilling into the end of a small piece of aluminum to create a tapped hole, with the location being critical. I wasted most of a day this weekend making a bracket only to discover I'd measured wrong and had to start all over again. Yikes! There's a bunch of little stuff like that which I'm working on, and it's just very time consuming. I had hopes of getting the machine 95% assembled over the weekend, but I had to go into work all day Saturday, and then made the big mess-up on Sunday afternoon. No complaints, it's the only thing that has gone wrong the entire project.

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Incredible...

Not really....it's mainly just like playing with an erector set. It's just a lot more expensive!

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Haha, my first art prof told us a story once about a time when he was viewing a Jackson Pollock painting in a museum. A woman walked by, he told us, and said, "My grandson could do that." He turned around and said, "Your grandson couldn't even pick the colors."

If that's an erector set, I wouldn't even know how to pick up the connector

go here.

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Well, the mechanicals are at about 95% now. It would be completely done except that their was an issue with a bad ball nut on one of the ballscrews. So back to California it goes, and hopefully in a couple weeks I will get it back and installed to drive the Z axis back and forth along the X axis.

I'll add a couple pics when I can get them resized.

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Here they are:

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."