Official Luthiers Forum!

G'day everyone.

As the choice for CNC machines in Australia is pretty limited to either very heavy duty industrial ones, or low end hobby engravers I'm left with importing. I've no interest, time or desire to build one myself. I've been trolling through the old posts here and see that a few of you have the KG-3925 CNC Machine and from all accounts are happy with them.

I'm considering the KG-3925-GTHK CNC Machine with a spindle. I'm waiting for K2 to get back to me with a shipping estimate and I expect that to be fairly hefty.

As it seems that most posting here acquired their machine some time ago, I'm looking for feedback and advice on any part of the package you might think pertinent.

Thanks in advance for your help and advice.

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Allen R. McFarlen
Barron River Guitars & Ukuleles
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Cairns, Australia

I don't actually own a K2 but I was looking at the KG3925 and while it looks like a great machine, it seems pretty pricy for what you get. I would recommend going on CNCZone and try and find some fellow countrymen that might be able to help you out. If you're not in too big of a hurry, you might find someone who can build you one.

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http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

I have the KG3925 and it's been a good machine. I have the style that uses the router instead of a real spindle. It's been trouble free since I got it about 4 years ago. I think they're a good buy for a home based shop!

Trev

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http://www.PeakeGuitars.com

Price is relative Andy. These things are a bargain compared to the Techno that I was kicking around the idea about purchasing. It has gone from $22,000 AUD from 2 years ago to $26,000 AUD now. Not including shipping, duty, taxes or software. As well the AUD$ has increased in value by 20% since then and is now trading above par to the USD$. When I asked the distributor about the discrepancy his comment was "I should have got in when the going was good". Needless to say I will not be dealing with someone like that.

Now when it comes to spindles K2 has an option for 2 HSD's or a Colombo.

-2.2 hp HSD 18,000 RPM
-3 hp Colombo 24,000 RPM
-4 hp HSD 18,000 RPM

The price between the 3 of them is $500 so while not insignificant is not anything that would disuade me from getting one over the other based on features, build quality, ease of use etc. I'm presuming that these things have the ability to both drill and route?

Another option is for an 8" upgrade to the Z axis. In your estimation is this a good option?

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Allen R. McFarlen
Barron River Guitars & Ukuleles
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Cairns, Australia

I have the 8" Z and am glad that I did get it. When you start carving necks & such it is very nice to have that extra height..!

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http://www.PeakeGuitars.com

I have the 3925. Its a good product. I have the router with the Z height upgrade also. I have a CNC lathe made by a different outfit that is a million times more trouble.

What about a 4th axis? Is it something that is a must have? I was thinking that it's probably pretty useful for necks, but as you can tell, I'm certainly over my head with a lot of this info.

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Allen R. McFarlen
Barron River Guitars & Ukuleles
Facebook
Cairns, Australia

I don't use a 4th axis for any guitar parts. There's no speed advantage unless it's a very rigid rotary, and a rotary axis like that off the shelf will cost you more than your machine. An arbitrary** neck can be done faster than any of the factories with one face-down and one on-side fixture in a 3-axis machine. A 4th axis is a cool thing to have though, and the ability to carve rings in the round might help patch things over with the missus if you spend too much time with the machine.

**I say arbitrary neck because some of the factories use 'cheat' necks which are purpose designed to be cut with form tools

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

Ya see...there ya go....I don't know what the hell you just said!! (mostly the last bit...waht are "form tools", "arbitrary necks", and "cheat necks". I thought we had 12 fret necks, 14 fret necks, 12 string necks, etc.)

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Canada

A bit over my head too Bob, but thanks for the reply.

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Allen R. McFarlen
Barron River Guitars & Ukuleles
Facebook
Cairns, Australia

Form tool is a specific tool profile that is made to order or in our case defined in the tool database using the dimensions and profile of say an ogee bit or roundover. These can require very specific tool paths to use. They are useful in the fact that a desired profile can be milled in a faster operation vs say modeling the same profile and milling it with a ball end mill.

I hope that makes some sense?

mike

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I'm outside looking in, just farther from the window than most.

That does Mike, thanks.

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Allen R. McFarlen
Barron River Guitars & Ukuleles
Facebook
Cairns, Australia

Well I bought the lowly 2514 shaft model last summer and I can tell you I simply love it. I've done necks and bodies with it and they come out great. I wish my other woodworking equipment was built with the care of the K2. The Z axis itself is a nice piece of engineering for those who want to roll their own. I can only imagine that the 3925 would be heavenly. The 14" working width is really my only issue as I'd like it to be at least 18. The 25 isn't a problem for what I do with it and it is open ended so theoretically it could accomodate longer parts... but for the price it can't be beat. I got the extruded table with mine and that was a great plus. It makes the machine more rigid.

I've had 4 different emails into K2 without a single response, so I'm not impressed with them.

I contacted Brett at Blurry Customs about this machine and he's been so very helpful and informative. Getting a shipping quote now and we'll see how this pans out. The best part of it is the wife is on board.

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Allen R. McFarlen
Barron River Guitars & Ukuleles
Facebook
Cairns, Australia

Allen,

Let us know how that works out. I'm currently in the process of purchasing an Xzero machine but there have been a lot of delays. If it doesn't work out, I'll need a plan B and this machine looks pretty good.

One thing I did notice though is that the electrics are priced really high. For around half their price, you can get a complete G540 setup with motors if you look around. e.g.: http://buildyourcnc.com/electronicscombo.aspx

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http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

What I'm looking at is a pretty specked out machine Andy. Going with the servo's and a 12" gantry with water cooled spindle, auto tool changer, NSK 20mm rails, jog pendant, touch probe, auto tool height sensor, configured for a 4th axis but haven't decided if I will add it now.

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Allen R. McFarlen
Barron River Guitars & Ukuleles
Facebook
Cairns, Australia

On first glance those Blurry's look like just another 80/20 bolt together machine but they've a lot of REALLY cool features.

Bob, I'm not sure what you mean by an arbitrary neck being able to be cut faster than the factories...but as I'm sure you know, you can carve a neck in about 5 minutes with a Fadal and a good jig. You could also use a custom tool as Bob suggests, but I think the quality of the carve might suffer(?).

Trev

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http://www.PeakeGuitars.com

Hi Allen,

The blurry customs looks to be a nice machine especially with the rotating nuts, I quite like them wish i had seen them before building my machine, might have gone that way instead if the standard nut and ball screw.

Have you seen this machine? http://www.cnclinear.com/ i only came across it recently and looks to be fairly solid.
They also seem to offer some training materials on drawing, programming etc if you needed it.

good luck with it, you won't know yourself when you start using the cnc!
just remember, don't change your designs to suit being made on the cnc, make the cnc fit your design!

Cheers
Glenn

Has anyone seen a real blurrycustoms machine by the way? It always worries me a bit when little shops only post renderings of their product.

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http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

Yes, I've dealt with Chris before and did get a quote on this machine. It however was not what I was after and his shipping cost was going to be $3,000. Just as much as it cost me to move my entire household contents from Canada to Australia.

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Allen R. McFarlen
Barron River Guitars & Ukuleles
Facebook
Cairns, Australia

Not that I know of. Spiro (CyborgCNC) posted in another thread about their stuff and I believe is at least acquainted with the owner on some level. Given how easy it is to whip something impressive up in Solidworks in an afternoon, I wouldn't be looking at any machine without a userbase or a lot of cutting videos and a guarantee unless I could go see it myself.



Arbitrary just means you can pick a neck, any neck, rather than just necks with a perfect C back carve for example. A form tool will leave a better finish than a ball, but designing for form tools puts limits on your geometry. The 'new' Seagull neck Godin is making is an extreme case of this: it's designed to be cut with a couple custom shaper cutters in a matter of seconds. Form tool just means the tool is the same shape as the part, so molding cutters and rosette cutters are a good example of common form tools.

As an aside on machining times: In metalworking, we have finishes to define what really got done in a length of time (ie: in 10 minutes with a 64 Ra finish), but in woodworking it's sort of open. One of the factories I visited 'could CNC a neck in 7 minutes', by which they meant they could get a chainsaw-quality finish on it in seven minutes. Taylor gets it ready for finish sanding in 7 minutes or so on the machine, but they also use a shaper to do the roughing and cut some headstock details outside the machine. It'd be interesting to see the total time each factory takes between 'block of mahogany' and 'ready for 400 grit' as well as the proportion of that time spent in the CNC.

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

I, too, am looking at a K2. This might not be "advice", but every guitar builder I know who can't afford a larger industrial unit has a K2 KG-3925. People I see online and people I've met in person, like Gene Baker. He now has a Haas or two now, but still keeps his K2s busy.

I was initially starting small looking at a KT-2514. I had limited space and I do inlay work. I could even get the frame for $1425 and do the motors and controllers myself. Now I'm about to move into a 1500 sq ft warehouse workshop so space is not an issue. A KG-3925 would be nice - but a fair chunk of change for me. It would be nice to be able to inlay and even create larger pieces. Rails and ballscrews would be great. Servos - maybe. For general guitar building they'd be of more use.

I'm on the fence about them for me. They're great when they're happy - and a pain when they're not. Do *I* need them? For my current inlay work - probably not. Pushing a tool means breaking a tool at the sizes I usually use (@ 10k rpm). If I'm using a larger tool it's for roughing or thicknessing. I might be better off putting that money into more tooling. A KG-3925 with steppers would be interesting. Or even a KT-2514 with rails and ballscrews. These don't appear to be listed on the website. I'd have to call and see if that's doable without incurring extra costs for a custom build. Though in the end, I just want my inlay pieces and pockets to match my patterns as closely as possible. I'm dealing with a backlash issue right now that's very frustrating. I need to tear down and rebuild my little mill, but I don't want to do this until after I move.

Back to Allen's question and the competition. I saw the blurrycustoms machine. Strange name. While more for your money is attractive, I know nothing about these people. I see only 3D renders on their website. Heck I can do photorealistic renders - I'd want to see photos of actual units. I've seen other people start selling these types of machines and then disappearing. If you're going to rely on this machine for paying the bills, I'd be a bit concerned.

What does that leave? Maybe Allen could look at the new CAMaster Stinger? It's competitively priced with a heavy steel frame. A lot of the 4'x8' guys seem to like CAMaster. But that's generally another, lower-tolerance world. A 25" x 36" machine should be fairly rigid though. I just don't know all that much about them yet. The SawmillCreek guys were going on about them, you might want to check over there.

Cheers,
...Athena

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http://home.comcast.net/~ath3na3/Portfolio/Port.html

I think most factories are between 30 minutes and 1 hr for neck time. This does not account for glue drying, "seasoning" time (i.e. drying on a rack), or any of the other typical wait times.

7 minutes sounds about right to me for an "arbitrary" neck carve in a factory. I'm definitely not a fan of the form cut necks. The carves just don't ever feel quite right.

Trev

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http://www.PeakeGuitars.com

I can't say who but I was visiting a factory that did form tool cut necks and they were talking in under a minute to carve. I agree with Trev though, the feel is a little lacking.