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Please excuse the very newbie questions that I'm going to ask, but I'm not afraid to look like a tool, and I'm sure that many of you, and the very many lurkers may very well have been thinking of the same things at one time or another.

As I'm still in the early stages of getting up to speed on CNC I was thinking about something simple like a rosette (in the middle of another sleepless night). I crux of my inquiry is about how you need to go about routing one, and the corresponding inlay? I guess the same would go for any sort of inlay such as fret markers or logo.

Does the rosette (or any inlay) need to be designed in 3D, with a depth, or is it as simple as a 2D vector drawing of circles, text or what not that you would then specify a depth of cut post design? Same goes for the inlay pieces?

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

Those are simple 2D drawings with a depth setting in the CAM portion of your software.

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"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 draw my rosette mortise and corresponding inlay in Rhino in 2d. With the inlay, I offset the toolpath a few thousandths of an inch less than the mortise. I then create a toolpath for each in my case with BobCad. This requires that I convert the 3D into a DXF first. On the mortise I use curve offset inside the object lines and for the inlay, I use curve offset outside the lines. I use the same offset here for both for example a .125 bit the curve offset would be .0625. I'm sure there is a way to do this with mach but I haven't ventured much into that yet. I set the depth in BobCad and can vary that by setting my Z zero above the material if I want to make it shallower.

Thanks guys. Just going to have to go out and get a windows machine to set the software up and have a play with it. Can do the design on my Mac but I don't want to put Windows on it.

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

What are you using to design on the Mac? I've got the rhino os x version on mine but I haven't gotten into it much. Vie got an old version of solid works running in vm ware fusion that works pretty well.

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

I can't comment on any other CAD CAM packages other than AutoCAD, Rhino, Vector and VisualMill. I will say that I wasted a LOT of time by not going with Rhino/VisualMill earlier.

Al,

I tried using Rhino and MadCAM on my Mac with Paralells but it was a ROYAL pain. Any upgrade to paralells just resulted in a bug in the CAM files so I bought another laptop, a toshiba, for about $800 (and you get them a lot cheaper) that I now use just for the Cad Cam stuff, all other business is still on the Mac.

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Canada

I've got AutoCad Mac 2011. Tried Turbo Cad which has a reasonably similar way of working but the curves I was drawing showed faceting. Don't know what would happen when cut, but the printed image showed it, so I abandoned it.

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

What are people using for the computer to drive MACH or what have you. Does a small laptop do the trick or is there something about lap tops that are inappropriate?

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

Allen,

It depends on your controller. Many require an old style DB25 parallel printer port connection. That's an easy add on for a desk top, not so much for a lap top. There are some newer controllers that run off USB ports and Gecko makes a USB interface called Smooth Stepper, I think. I ended up getting a refurbished desk top from Dell for a couple hundred dollars plus the cost of a parallel port expansion card. Personally I like the idea of being able to use a lap top, but from what I've read it seems like it can be a hit or miss proposition.

Bob

The usb smooth stepper is the option I'm going with.

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

The SmoothStepper is not made by GeckoDrive, it is made by Warp 9 Tech Design, and is USB based, however it is not without certain bugs. Gecko had a product that worked via ethernet cable called the G-100 or G-Rex, but it was a bust due to firmware that didn't do the job. There were also manufacturing problems that people had to contend with. I started out with the Gecko G-100, and had too many issues with being able to connect to it so gave up and bought the SmoothStepper and a new break-out board. Occasionally, the computer and the SmoothStepper stop communicating, but never during a job, just when the machine sits idle. It is a good solution if you don't have a computer with two fully working parallel ports. If you do have a computer with two fully working parallel ports, then there's not any real advantage to going with a SmoothStepper.

If you're going to go with a USB device, be aware that running a wireless USB network to the computer is probably not a good move, and the same can be said for using other USB devices on that computer. I had some issues with that, and found out that the way USB is handled by a computer is to provide resources to the different devices as needed, which means that it can interrupt the timing of another USB device. Considering how critical timing is for cnc code, it's smart to minimize potential issues. Go with an ethernet connection for your network, and keep all other software off the cnc computer. Run a clean install of your OS with nothing funky running in the background. Keep it OFF the internet...

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"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."

Allen, aren't you getting a K2? Doesn't it come with a computer? This shouldn't be an issue for you I wouldn't think? I'm no expert considering I built my cnc instead of buying one, but I would think that it comes complete with the software to run the cnc and connections to the drives.
Your only worry would be in creating CAD drawings and then CAM files to import to the cnc computer. Maybe I'm wrong on this, but it makes sense that they would provide the cnc computer part.

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"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've given up on the K2 when after a week of trying to contact them via every email address and form that they have on their website I didn't get a single reply. Pretty poor form in my book. Doesn't bode well for any support questions I might have down the track

I'm going to go the the Blurry Customs system. Complete system configured and tested prior to shipping to Cairns. BTW, shipping via air to Cairns is $1050. Sea freight to Brisbane was $750 but at about 1600 km away I'd be paying any savings into freight from down south.

I just like to know what the options mean, and trying to get a basis for the questions I'm asking. It's a bloody steep learning curve.

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

Tell me about it !

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"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."