Hello Lovely CNC People

[Archy]

Hi Everyone.

I've joined this forum as I'm about to purchase a CNC machine and need help understanding what I'm looking for and what to avoid.

I would like to start building jazz guitars which involves the carving of two arched plates and a neck. Think giant Violin or a miniature Cello.

I'm a bit of a prat so I usually buy Mafell tools because I don't want the tool to get in the way of my idiocy. A good tool does its job well, so when something doesn't work properly, the only culprit left is me.

I need a small machine, preferably 1200x600 or 6090 at a push and my budget is around 4-6k.
I would prefer to buy new but used is ok too.

I would like to use Fusion 360 or Solidworks with Master Cam CAD, so an open CAM programme would be great.

I am aware of things like ball screws and other signs of quality but my knowledge is still poor enough that I don't know the difference between good quality ball screws and the poor ones. Hence why I'm not ordering direct from China.

Thanks in advance for any help offered and for reading my post.

Cheers!

[Clive S]

Welcome to the forum Archie you must be psychic as there is a member on here Jazzcnc that builds machines to order and your budget seems good he may even have a second hand one.

Wish you all the best.

[Archy]

Thanks Clive.

Yes I believe it was a post by JazzCnC that encouraged me to join this site in the first place.

Hopefully he'll pop along and save the day!

[JAZZCNC]

Welcome to the forum Archie you must be psychic as there is a member on here Jazzcnc that builds machines to order and your budget seems good he may even have a second hand one.

Wish you all the best.


Thanks Clive.

Yes I believe it was a post by JazzCnC that encouraged me to join this site in the first place.

Hopefully he'll pop along and save the day!

Thought my ears were burning..:smiley_simmons:

Well, Archy seems we are made for each other, we can certainly provide the Jazz you need to put into your Jazz guitars.!

I have a few options which will suit your needs and budget, I also have the perfect machine for making guitars that has a rotary 4th axis at one side which would allow necks to be machined in one operation rather than cutting one side and flipping as is normally done with a standard router.

So if this interests you can I ask you to email me at the address below and I will give you my contact details so we can have a chat. It will also be easier for me to send you any info, pics, etc.

[email protected]

Cheers
Dean

[the great waldo]

Hello Archie
As a guitar maker myself and a fairly hopeless cnc person (brought up before calculators were invented) I got a makko machine years ago and it sat in my workshop for years as a shelf. I discovered uccnc software eventualy which made the machine actually workable although not great. I think Jazz should be able to sort you out with a good machine. I did end up buying plans and videos from https://cncguitar.com/cnc-guitar/fusion-360-archtop-guitar/ and found them easy to use with ready files and tutorials (I'm not affiliated with the company) If you have some pre made files it makes things faster and the videos are good for learning. May I mention that you should try and make a Jazz guitar by hand first to learn the realities of putting an instrument together. When it comes to making guitars cnc will save you a lot of time for many stages but also slow you down (Initially ) in other stages. Producing multiple parts for example where the main effort goes into the 3d designing in the software which after it's done than it's just a matter of setting up and routing. CNC is a bit like learning another language, hard at first and then it clicks and becomes much easier. Good luck and have fun and always make test cuts in mdf or insulation board to save mucking up and expensive spruce top or maple back.
Cheers
Andrew

[Archy]

Thought my ears were burning..:smiley_simmons:

So if this interests you can I ask you to email me at the address below and I will give you my contact details so we can have a chat. It will also be easier for me to send you any info, pics, etc.

[email protected]

Cheers
Dean

Thanks Dean will get in touch via Email. Regards Archy.

[Archy]

Hi Waldo

Thanks for the message of encouragement.

Yes I've been in touch with Spiro at CNCguitar.com. He's been helping advise me regarding software compatibility on machines and he helped me look over a machine I was interested in. His educational videos look really good and he's encouraging me to use F360 so happy to get that side sorted. Really nice guy.

Now it's just a case of buying a machine or alternatively paying someone to CNC the parts for me.

It had crossed my mind that paying someone to machine the parts, from plans I've bought from someone else, or getting someone with CAD experience to help me design what I want, might be the easier way to actually get things going. I can then spend my money on luthier tools for the fretting and spraying, although getting some one to do that might be better too.
Maybe I'm turning into Ibanez :)

On the other hand, there's nothin like having a new toy.

We'll see what Dean says.

[the great waldo]

Hi Archy
I'd imagine getting someone to do any kind machining is going to be quite expensive, there would be a lot of hours involved. If you have the space time money to get a cnc machine then go for it. It's a bit of a learning curve but comes with practice, pretty much the same as everything else. Maybe making a guitar by hand in parallel with the cnc stuff to keep you motivated. You won't need an unbelievable amount of tools to make a Jazz guitar by hand. I know a guy here in Austria who is totally impatient and made a jazz guitar in his small flat and it turned out to be a really nice instrument and he has made more, so anything is possible. Mind you I don't know if his wife is still talking to him after he sprayed the guitar in the flat!!
All the best
Andrew
ps. you're right about Spiro he's a very helpfull chap

[Archy]

Thanks Andrew

Believe it or not, as the saying goes, I actually have no intention to learning how to carve an archtop guitar. It takes too long to master and there are many other far more time consuming things to learn.

As a player I actually prefer laminate guitars. My Favourite being a Guild X-500. Carved top guitars are a mixed bag. Some are great but many are not. Too many variables and the time it takes to make them means they will cost too much.

The Jazz guitar world is shrinking at an alarming rate. The great and good 'boomers' are passing away and so too is their HUGE collection of Archtop guitars. I assume there will be a 1970's style drop in the market for such instruments as they come online in vast quantities.

I intend to take a different route. One that will hopefully sustain a business making things that fewer people want.

Wish me luck,I'll need it :)

[Kitwn]

Welcome to the forum Archy.
You're in the right place for good advice about a cnc machine, but there are also plenty of us who want to see the guitar grow when you get round to building it.

Kit

[dazp1976]

Well, Archy seems we are made for each other, we can certainly provide the Jazz you need to put into your Jazz guitars.!
Dean

That's got to be your worst pun yet Dean :whistle: :rolleyes:

[dazp1976]

Well, Archy seems we are made for each other, we can certainly provide the Jazz you need to put into your Jazz guitars.!
Dean

That's got to be your worst pun yet Dean :whistle: :rolleyes:

[BeeceUK]

Hi,

I can certainly vouch for a JazzCNC when it comes to building guitars. I got my Jazz9060 for the purpose of building guitars at the back end of March as a complete CNC newbies and its a cracking piece of kit. I'm currently working on a Les Paul with my CNC which you can see the progress of here ...

http://www.mycncuk.com/threads/14702-Guitar-Building-with-my-JazzCNC-machine

A 4th axis would be very useful for you, especially when it comes to Jazz guitar necks which often have a far deeper heel much like that of an acoustic guitar, being able to machine that heel with a rotating neck blank would be a great help and avoid the issues of using pins to flip the blank 4 times or struggling to find cutters that would do it all from the blank being fretboard down.

What I most appreciate about my Jazz CNC is that "it just works" which for a beginner to CNC cannot be overlooked, there's no pulling your hair out like you may do with a cheaper / inferior machine. I use Fusion 360 and I just export my G code as Mach3 tap files and load it into UCCNC and it cuts just as I would expect.

Hope this helps with your choice of a machine

Ben

[JAZZCNC]

That's got to be your worst pun yet Dean :whistle: :rolleyes:

Ye, was a bit cheesy but hey you got to put a bit of Jazz into these things...:toot:

[Archy]

Welcome to the forum Archy.
You're in the right place for good advice about a cnc machine, but there are also plenty of us who want to see the guitar grow when you get round to building it.

Kit

Thanks Kit.

[Archy]

Thanks Ben.

Yes I have been thinking about a 4th axis but budget is a cruel mistress.

You are spot on regarding the heal depth on a full body jazz guitar. I had been mulling that one over myself these last few days.

There are several ways to get round this:

1) Build laminated necks.
2) Build thinner bodies
3) Build a 2piece heal or a shallower heal with a thick cap. Kind of like the Benedetto style.

I thought I had worked out all the CAD CAM stuff (ignorance is bliss), so your Mach3 addition made me interested in why you have that extra stage between f360 and UCCNC. Is it because you wanted a controller so you didn't have to run a PC all the time?
That's what I would like to do. Saves the PC crashing and your work going down the pan.

Regards

Archy

[Archy]

Hi Dean. Sending you an email now.

Cheers.

[BeeceUK]

I thought I had worked out all the CAD CAM stuff (ignorance is bliss), so your Mach3 addition made me interested in why you have that extra stage between f360 and UCCNC. Is it because you wanted a controller so you didn't have to run a PC all the time?
That's what I would like to do. Saves the PC crashing and your work going down the pan.

Regards

Archy

Hi,

Im not entirely sure what you mean by this?

What I was meaning was that I just generate my toolpaths in Fusion and export the toolpaths using a Mach3 post processor in Fusion with a .tap file extension.

I then load this up on the PC attached to the CNC which runs UCCNC and the file works flawlessly.

I hope this explains your question?

[Archy]

Hi Ben

I thought Mach3 was a type of controller and since you can post process for UCCNC in F360 I didn't understand it's inclusion in the chain.

Could you explain further? I seem to be misunderstanding what Mach3 is or how it can function.

[BeeceUK]

Hi,

Im probably not the best person to give you a technical answer as I'm a total noob to this myself, but basically I have Fusion360 set up to use the MAch3 Mill post processer. This means that it creates file that are native to the Mach3 control software that alot of people use. UCCNC can read these files and run them and in my limited experience , runs them perfectly.

regards

[JAZZCNC]

Hi Ben

I thought Mach3 was a type of controller and since you can post process for UCCNC in F360 I didn't understand it's inclusion in the chain.

Could you explain further? I seem to be misunderstanding what Mach3 is or how it can function.

Hi Archy,

Maybe I can explain it a little clearer. Mach3 and UCCNC are both control software and do exactly the same job which is taking the G-code you create in F360 and translate this into motion at the machine along with other tasks like starting/stopping the spindle, monitoring limits, E-stop, etc along with other tasks.

Now, mach3 has been around a very long time and many CAM packages have post processors which are written for it. However, mach3 is now a bit of a dinosaur and unsupported by the software company who make it, they released mach4 about 3yrs ago but it's terrible software and full of bugs.

This next bit gets a little technical and deep but I'll try to keep it brief but still bare with me all will become clear.!!
When mach3 was first released over 25yrs ago the only real and affordable way to control a machine at the hobby level was using the parallel port (PP) of a PC as the motion control device.
But as the times moved on and PCs got faster and electronics cheaper the PP which was relatively limited in the frequency it could output , which in turn limited the speed and smoothness of the machine it started to be replaced or bypassed with external motion control devices. This was basically a much faster external to the PC "box of tricks" which transformed the machine and was supplied by various hardware companies.

Now in order for mach3 to talk these box of tricks from various suppliers, each manufacture had to supply a piece of software called a "plug-in". However, this could and often did prove troublesome because with each version or update of mach3 it could easily cause incompatibility issues with the plug-in which made the "box of tricks" useless because mach3 would no longer talk to it so then the box of tricks manufacturer would have to update the plug-in and on it went. As you can imagine this quickly become a nightmare for the box of tricks manufacturers.
The company CNCDRIVE that designed UCCNC where one of the companies that made the box of tricks for mach3 and they decided they had enough of this constant crippling and rewriting plug-ins and decided to write their own software so UCCNC was born. However, they didn't want to abandon all customers who bought their "box of tricks" so they made them capable of using both Mach3 OR UCCNC which is why any code that was written or post-processed for mach3 will work with UCCNC.

Now, Mach3 is no longer supported and hasn't been for many years and because UCCNC is still supported and produced by the "box of tricks" manufacturer it has developed into a far superior piece of software to Mach3 or even its replacement mach4, which by the way is dreadful software that is full of bugs best avoided.
This combination of UCCNC and "box of tricks" is what I now fit on all my machines and why Ben is using a Mach3 post-processor in F360.

[dazp1976]

^^^
What Jazz said.
I'm making the switch to uccnc also.
I have both mach3 and uccnc.
Now, where mach3 is concerned I have only had great successs with it using winXP. Had various glitches with win7. Mach is so old that I'd say it was designed for xp. Any other o.s. can be problematic and not many folk will have xp available.

I'm switching to uccnc mainly because I need more I/O and a higher kernel frequency, this is where Mach falls down for me as parallel has it's limitations. I've avoided using usb (recommended!!) and gone straight up to an ethernet controller instead. I'm still using mach with my uc300eth controller until I get fully familiar with uccnc.

Furthermore, I can hopefully save some power and run it off a laptop.

[Archy]

BTW I ended up buying a JazzCNC machine and am very happy with it. Jez is good at trouble shooting and they have helped me solve any problem that has arisen.
I wouldn't have been able to get into CNC machining without their help, which goes to show, it's not just the machine you buy but the people you buy it from.

I'm about to purchase a laser cutter and I'm looking at the used market, but what if that goes wrong; who will I call?

A CNC or laser cutter that you can't use, might as well not be there at all.

Schrödinger's laser cutter.