School me on the best machine for big hardwood

[Clive S]

I may well be wrong, maybe steppers are perfectly sufficient, but I can now only convince myself of this if I can see them producing similar results to the above youtube link. At the end of the day, if I can't expect that sort of performance, I don't think I can justify investing so much time in a custom build!

Yes bigger more powerful spindles like 3 kw you can use bigger cutters. If you want more motor power then use nema 34 but then you need higher voltage drives (mains voltage type).

The machine like Wal's in my opinion is far more sturdy than the one you linked to. Modern tool paths can out perform with greater speed and less spindle power. Why not have a look at some feed and speed calculators.

using 10mm pitch screws with steppers you can easily get 10mts/min You will be surprised how fast 5mts/min is on a small machine.

[bluesking]

Yes bigger more powerful spindles like 3 kw you can use bigger cutters. If you want more motor power then use nema 34 but then you need higher voltage drives (mains voltage type).

The machine like Wal's in my opinion is far more sturdy than the one you linked to. Modern tool paths can out perform with greater speed and less spindle power. Why not have a look at some feed and speed calculators.

using 10mm pitch screws with steppers you can easily get 10mts/min You will be surprised how fast 5mts/min is on a small machine.

Thanks Clive, good food for thought.

Wal's machine certainly looks more sturdy than this K2. In fact, almost all machines I've seen look more sturdy than the K2. In my mind, this begs the question, why have I not seen any desktop machine performing as well as the K2 in this scenario?

It doesn't look like the timings will work out for me to see Wal's machine in action before pressing ahead with mine as I do need to get going. I'm sure you're right about 10/5 m/min, I couldn't even tell you what numbers the K2 is running at - all I can see is that the cuts look exactly what I want to be doing and I've not seen anything else that doest - leaves me with quite the risk of going down a dark path!

Compare the rickety K2 taking nice deep cuts with big cutters:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLNeA1oUCGc

To these much more sturdy machines, seemingly taking their sweet time scratching away:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5Jy5cJscXU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WatC-mihuoA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Psr9Yt49grw

[Washout]

Hi bluesking

I can see why you want to go for larger cutters and for roughing I would agree, however there is another factor to maybe consider dependant on the guitar design/type you are looking to machine. I'm sure you're aware that most routed pockets on say a Les Paul or Telecaster are a. imperial, but b. also are designed for a set of cutters that have certain corner radii e.g. 1/8 inch which means using a 1/4 inch cutter for most humbuckers. So you may be able to rough out the pockets with an 8-12mm cutter, but will have to do a tool change and a clean up operation with a smaller cutter to clear out the corners.

Also I am using 70v nema 23 steppers on my machine and it easily goes to 15mm depth per pass and I could make that 20mm without too much if any additional tool wear - see here: https://youtu.be/WVf5J8XytSA

BTW if you want the CAD for a "normal" Tele I have that linked in video #9 of the series above. There's a thread on here somewhere as well, as it was a kind of community project.

Chris