Machining the Neck | Project Mehr | Guitar Build Log Part 2

hello everyone my name is austin and welcome back to my channel now that my cnc is all tuned up we are finally going to start building the neck for this guitar so today's plan is that we're going to go ahead and surface our waste board so that it's nice and parallel to our gantry like we talked about in the last video and then we're going to go ahead and make this fixture and then we're going to cut both sides of the neck now we're basically going to follow the exact process that i laid out in my cam for flat guitar next video so if you want any more information on this process or this fixture or any of the tool paths that i'm going to be using you can find out all of that in that video i'll leave a link down in the description below so let's not waste any more time and let me show you how i turned a blank of mahogany like this into a neck like this let's dig right in all right so i've set up my three quarter inch surfacing bit and i'm just gonna go ahead and bring that over to roughly over top of the corner of my spoil board here and i've got a program that will just automatically cut the size that i'm looking for so let's bring this over let's bring it down [Music] okay and i'm just trying to get it roughly centered it doesn't matter because i'm just going to be going over the edges anyway it doesn't matter that it's particularly accurate i don't really need to zero things like crazy okay that's roughly center there and that's roughly center there so let's go ahead and make that x zero y zero okay and then i'm gonna jog it over a little bit and we're gonna zero our waste board our zero to our waste board right here and i generally tend to just use like a little flashlight or my magnifying glass to shine behind it until i see that it touches and as soon as i see it touches i'm good so let's go ahead and bring this down sometimes what i'll just do is i'll just feel it if i can feel it kind of rubbing okay it's not quite there yet let me go down a bit more grab that okay that's perfect i can just barely feel it scrubbing don't need to plug in any sort of uh probe or anything like that we're just trying to get this roughly set up so that's going to be zero and let's jog up okay see up go back to xyz y okay now i normally have a a hose system connected to a connected to a dust shoe and but unfortunately for this case it's not really going to show up on camera very well so i'm just not going to use this in this case but i might end up having to use this later when we're making significantly more chips so i'm just going to set that down for now and let's go ahead and turn on my spindle set it at the lowest setting make sure everything else is out of the way yep there's nothing on my spoil board so we're good okay i'm just gonna hit play and yep got it okay it's gonna retract up a little bit speed that up just a little bit okay so i'm taking a 16th inch off right now i'm gonna turn on my turn on my vacuum and i'll see you guys back in a minute [Music] okay so we've surfaced the wasteboard and as you can see you cannot tell or see really any tool marks or even any ridges or anything like that and so let me go ahead and zoom in here and let's look down yes you can tell that we got a really good tram on our system without doing any test cuts because there is almost zero tool marks or ridges present and on some areas you can see like a faint hint of a line like right there and right there but there's no you can't feel them whatsoever it's completely dead smooth so that's because we took a re we took the time to do a really good tram on our system and i this is probably honestly the flattest this waste board has ever been since i've owned it so i'm really happy with that and i think it's time to move on to the fixture so i started by trimming up some half inch phenolic plywood to a width of about seven inches now i really like using this material for fixtures because tape sticks to it really well compared to mdf and there's far less chance of my parts breaking free by accident mid-cycle it's also very easy to clean and substantially more resilient for dowel pins because it doesn't tear drop the dowel pin holes as easily when applying clamp pressure so for me this is my ideal fixture material then i swapped out my three quarter inch surfacing bit for a quarter inch two flute down cut carbide end mill so that way we can start cutting the fixture now i typically use down cut end mills for most work on my cnc as they leave a nice top surface and apply downward force to my wasteboard then i installed three dowel pins in my wasteboard that i used to align and square my parts to my cnc and then once it's aligned i use two clamps to hold it in place to make sure my fixture doesn't go anywhere okay so i'm just going to eyeball this because i made this i made this board about an inch wider than i actually need it to be so i'm just going to eyeball it to right here and then go in about half of an inch so that way i can um cut reasonably within the middle of this and have my fixture start at this board right here and so that's what we're gonna do okay and we're gonna do the same thing we're going to shine a light behind there i'm going to rotate my bit bring it down a little bit more [Music] let me see if i can bring you guys in on this hold on so unfortunately i can't get the camera quite close enough at this angle to go ahead and show you perfectly but what i do is i shine a light behind it and then i jog my z-axis or not my z-axis my x inward until i'm pretty close and then i will keep going in a little bit further and i'll watch the shadow on the side of this as it creeps towards the bit as i bring the bit in and as soon as it gets really close almost touching like right now i'll switch it to one thou increments and i will just go until i see that the bit is touching so we're almost there okay that's perfect it's just starting to scrape the side so that means we're dead on right there so that's going to be my x0 and let's jog our z or our x out a little bit for some clearance jog our z up we're going to go to x zero so we'll do i'm gonna set my y zero for the moment and we're gonna go x zero y zero all right and so i'm gonna jog that in 0.125 because this is a quarter inch bit so x .125 and that is going to be my new zero so now i'm going to say x zero got it okay and now i'm going to jog this in let's see my fixture is six inches i made this seven inches reasonably close but not not perfect so seven inches so i'm going to go in half an inch so i'm going to say x 0.5 okay that is going to be so my bit is actually going to end up being to the outside of that and that's okay but that's going to set where my corner is and so now what i just need to do is let's get it lined up a little bit with y so i'm gonna bring the camera over here and let's zoom there you go okay and we're just gonna eyeball this a little bit sorry for the camera work i'm doing this kind of sideways i'm gonna go just get it reasonably close doesn't have to be perfect we're going to end up drilling dowel pin holes in fact i think i might just go a little bit further in yep maybe even a little bit further okay that'll work for me so that means that the my my fixture is gonna lie the edge of my fixture is gonna be right on the center mark of this bit which will be just shy of this board so it'll be just to this way of this board right here and so that should be good so i'm going to zero my x and y let's bring the camera back okay so we're gonna do x zero y zero okay and then all we need to do is find z so i'm just gonna do the same thing i just did a second ago where i shine a little light i don't use a probe for this because i can get pretty damn accurate with just doing it this way so z negative okay i need to smaller increments okay shadow's almost there let's go in one thousand increments i okay i'm not quite scraping it just a tad bit more maybe one or two more thou i'm gonna grab my mind okay we're like a thou or two off here it doesn't really matter for what we're doing right here but i always try to get it perfect if i can okay perfect i just started to feel it scrape just barely um there's almost no line on it so we are good there so i'm going to say that is z zero so i should have x zero y zero z zero right at that point right there so now i'm going to jog my z up for a safety height just get it off the waste board here okay so that way i can turn on my spindle and everything now i normally have a um i normally have a dust shoe connected to this uh but for purposes of filming i'm going to go ahead and run it without it even though my wife will probably get really irritated with the amount of dust that'll be in the shop but we're going to clean that up later but that way you guys can see it a little bit better so i've loaded up my program just make double check everything i've got my x0 y0 zero and we are going to be cutting the the slot that goes around my neck and then we're going to be cutting the roughing in the dowel pin holes for both alignment for the fixture and alignment for the part during the flip and then we're also going to be cutting afterwards on a separate operation we're going to be fine tuning those holes and then we're going to be cutting the contour last so that way i can go ahead and insert dowel pins into the actual fixture to help hold it in place so it doesn't break free and i don't have to use tabs that way so let's go ahead and we're going to start this so it should be good right program's running okay i'm gonna adjust my spindle speed as much as i need [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] now what we're gonna go ahead and do is cut the dowel pin hole i think i was cutting into my aluminum there that's not good [Music] yeah all right well we're gonna run it yeah i'm cutting into my t-slots there oops [Music] okay so that's it for off one [Music] okay so what i should have done was measure the distance between these two dowel pins so that way my dowel pin didn't line up with a t-slot in fact i ended up just cutting right through my t-slot and that kind of sucks those aren't cheap um so what i'll probably end up having to do is i'll probably leave this dowel pin where it's at and leave the fixture exactly where it's at this one is yep we're good there it's pretty nice into the center here these ones are a little closer to the edge than i'd actually hoped for but they should be okay so yeah what i think i'm gonna do is go back to my stock add in some dowel pin holes a little bit further back on the stock and uh we'll see if we can um compensate for that so i've gone ahead and i have updated my the length of my fixture to be one inch longer and so that way it moved those dowel pins in the back to one inch further back and we're going to go ahead and recut just that portion so i i exported that as its own tool path so let's go ahead and turn on the cnc we've already sent it back to xy0 and let's run it okay so it should cut those one inch further back [Music] for pretty aggressive feeds and speeds i probably should have done that a little slower so when i do the cleanup ones i'll go ahead and make those a bit slower as well [Music] okay i'm happier with those that's the end of that tool path so i'm just going to go back to my machine update the feeds and speeds for the cleanup operation so we can size these holes to just the right size okay so i'm gonna go ahead and send this back to xy0 and then we're gonna go ahead and upload the new g-code so what i'm gonna do is i have a g-code set up so that it cuts this hole this hole and the new two back holes and taking five thou extra off and i'll do a test fit with my dowel pin now i've already done one test fit on here and it's definitely too tight i can't get it in there so i'm gonna take about five thou out see if we can get any closer and then once i feel like i'm almost there i'll take in one thousand increments and then we'll get it dead on so let's go ahead and turn on our i'm gonna hit spindle and let's run it so i'm actually just going to pause the program now and test the fit so i don't have to spend the time traveling all the way to the other side so it looks like we are still too tight so i'm going to go ahead and take about i'd say we're still probably another five thou out so i'm just gonna go nominal just .375 and let's see how close we get turning on the spindle [Applause] [Music] ah okay shut off the spindle we should be really close here yeah those are pretty snug but they will go in i think i want these to be a little bit looser so i'm going to take one extra thou out and i think we'll be okay [Music] okay that's about what i'm aiming for so they're still pretty snug but i can get them in and out as i need to so i'm happy with that so i'm just gonna turn my spindle back on and we're gonna keep resuming the program and let it cut the rest of the holes go ahead and go clay [Music] okay and because fusion doesn't like people using g0 rapids lol um my machine's moving at a snail's pace unfortunately so that's okay i'll see you guys when we get back so moving along we're gonna go ahead and stop that program move it back to x0y0 and we're going to go ahead and resize the dowel pin holes for the actual neck itself so let's go ahead and upload the second dowel pin sizing file and let's turn on our spindle we're going to resize these ones to the same size let's check our hole sizes again so we'll come down here yes those are nice and snug there's still some dust in there though which is kind of clogging it up okay let's see if those fit just maybe a little bit better yeah those will go in with a little bit of massaging but i want these ones to be tight anyway once we get that finally cut so we're good there [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] all right well this has been somewhat of a nightmare but i'm also super excited with the results um i made a lot of mistakes this time around uh particularly in machining my fixture and these dowel pin holes i'll get you guys a close-up on this in a second what ended up happening is i originally had one dowel pin hole here in the middle and now you can see i've got one two three four five six because i either forgot to zero my work offsets when i did the dowel pin holes or the part moved or um they were too tight or sorry they got too loose and then i ended up having to do new ones again and it was just a nightmare and so i apologize that i didn't maybe show some of that in its full extent but what we ended up with was a really nice neck and i'm really happy with it so we've got the truss rod the full contour we've got the relief for the tuners and we've got this the 3d little tool path i made that in the netcam video turned out really well i'm really happy with that you can't see any tool marks or anything so that's great one downside is i normally like to be a little bit more precise with the whole sizes of things like i did with my dowel pins i don't have the tuners here yet and so i just did these two nominally 10 millimeter although i know my cnc makes them a little small so i don't know exactly how accurate those uh hip shot tuners are and if they're exactly 10 millimeter then i'm gonna have to probably sand those out to open up the hole a little bit or maybe buy like a 10 millimeter reamer and come through and clean that up so we are now actually set up for the flip so let's go ahead and flip this part over and do the back side okay i think we can wiggle it free there we go all right see i damaged my fixture a bit but that's okay not a big deal it's not damaging the part now i normally don't have that issue because i normally um i normally don't install the dowel pins beforehand so that was a big um lack of foresight on my part okay let's make sure we oriented the correct direction yep okay so that should be good so okay i'm gonna grab a block here two hours later okay that should be good let's go ahead and reclamp this up that'll help hold the glue down it's not really that necessary for everything else though this is just to keep the fixture from moving that down okay [Music] there we go okay everything looks good part is oriented correctly let the hammer away okay so i'm gonna check my my work offsets because i ended up having to take this off in order to get the part off so i need to make sure that my work offsets are still accurate so let me go ahead and do that and we'll be right back [Music] so [Applause] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right well there you have it we have a semi-finished guitar neck that turned out beautiful i am super thrilled with the way this turned out all of my transitions came out exactly like i had hoped in the model um there are a couple things i would change though so one thing i would change is my step over um on the neck and i've talked about this with some of the people in discord i used a quarter inch ball nose end mill with a 32nd of an inch step over and it actually turned out as you can see really nice on the neck but in the headstock transition and some of my heel transitions the tool marks are pretty extensive and that is going to require a lot of sanding on my part i think in hindsight what i would have done better or how i would have been better served is by using maybe a 10 thou step over and hopefully even a larger ball nose end mill so that way i could leave myself very little sanding or scraping work to do at the very end but that's okay you live and learn either way this neck looks beautiful this truss rod just fits like a glove it just clicks right in so i'm really thrilled with how that fits and don't miss next week when we're going to be taking this beautiful piece of wenge material and be making a fretboard out of it and eventually gluing it onto our neck so i will see you guys in the next video this is austin signing out

Channel: Austin Shaner

Views: 1,208

Keywords: Autodesk Fusion 360, CAD, CAD Modeling, CAM, CAM Basics, CNC, CNC Router, DIY, Fusion 360, Fusion 360 Beginner, Fusion 360 CAM Guitars, Fusion 360 Tutorials, Guitars in Fusion 360, Tutorials, fusion 360 tutorial, Autodesk, Sketching basics, Variable Chamfer, Variable Fillet, Guitar Body, Guitar Neck, Xcarve, Xcarve CNC, Guitars with Xcarve, CNC for Guitars, Project Mehr, Mehr, DIY Guitar, DIY Guitar Neck, Flat Guitar Neck, Guitar Neck CAM

Id: rkKVAZsm9ww

Length: 33min 44sec (2024 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 24 2021