Guitar Building with my JazzCNC machine

[BeeceUK]

Hi,

I joined the forum last year looking for advice on where to get a machine that would be suitable for my hobby of building guitars. I was pointed in the direction of Dean ( JazzCNC ) and after having a bit of a chat with him, put my name down for one of the small 9060 machines he was planning on doing a run of.

I got my machine April time and have been spending the time since then on clueing myself up on how to run it / create toolpaths etc.

Ive recently been working on building a Les Paul style guitar using my machine and have successfully now got both a fingerboard and body made for my guitar. The fretboard for this guitar is ebony and uses celluloid for the inlays . I designed it in Fusion and successfully machined and then fretted and bound my fingerboard ...








The body is made from African Mahogany, its actually a four piece body, primarily as I got the wood cheap and figured if I end up mucking it up, then I wouldn't be as devastated as if I trashed a pricey Brazilian Mahogany body blank. The body requires machining on both sides so I had a bit of homework to do in regards to flipping the workpiece over and realigning with steel pins. The mahogany was routed and weight relieved in preparation to having a maple cap added ....





The maple for the top was prepared again using the CNC to flatten and thickness the two halves and also joint the edges of the boards, which it did brilliantly. I created my toolpaths in Fusion and ran them on the machine...













Once again, it performed brilliantly, I cant say enough good things about Deans machines. Especially as a beginner in the world of CNC'ing , I think I would have thrown in the towel if I ended up with a machine that didn't really work as it should or just caused ongoing problems that as a beginner I wouldn't have a clue how to solve. The fact that it just works as it should is brilliant for a newbie such as myself as it allows me to just get on with making stuff and not having to faff around with the machine itself.

Next up is to design and make a jig to hold the body at an angle in the machine in order to route the neck and pickup cavities at the correct angle in relation to the body ( they aren't parallel to the back of the guitar) and then crack on and get the toolpaths sorted for the neck as well. Ill hopefully have some more to show in the near future !!