Yes, You Can 3D Carve a Guitar on the MakerMade M2 (Fingerboard, too?)

this video was sponsored by maker made this is not an unbiased review of the product it is an honest assessment of their current m2 release you know while some youtubers will sell just about any old crap on their channels for quick payday i only work with companies and products that i truly believe in if i try something and i don't like it you simply won't see it here just the fact that you're seeing this means that i like it and then everything that i say afterwards is going to be my honest opinion even the stuff i don't like last year i started working with maker made cnc to investigate the developments that they continue to make to their maslow cnc with the release of their latest upgrade the 1000 m2 they have crossed a major threshold and kicked my skepticism in the butt i have a beautiful pro-level avid cnc that i do most of my work on but this is not an affordable or practical solution for everyone especially hobbyists and weekend woodworkers most of the budget-minded cnc's out there are too small and leave a lot to be desired and are still several times the cost of this maslow so after building and using the 500 one last year my conclusion was that the machine is worth it the price to get hobbyists like into the game it may lack the speed and convenience and accuracy of traditional cnc but it can do some of the basic cnc cutting and with practice and patience can be a valuable experience in addition to your shot it is not fair to compare this machine to machines that cost eight to ten times the others the main problem with the original maslow was the z-axis the up and down movement it was built off of a handheld router base and it was sort of slow and accurate and it was also complicated to set up digitally um in the computer side of it so when chris said that they had made improvements to this and they asked me to try it out i said i was interested of course like i mentioned i have a top shelf cnc so i don't need a maslow but i believe in what they're trying to do which is make you know quality large format cnc machines affordable to everyone then i saw the price tag for the new m2 which is almost double now in a thousand dollars and i was immediately skeptical i do believe that the 500 machine is worth 500 bucks but i wasn't sure if they could make this into a thousand dollar machine i really didn't think that the chain hanging platform could be pushed to have that kind of value it does by creating this fabulous little gantry the z now moves up and down much faster still slow compared to other machines but much faster with accuracy that is like rivals any other cnc i've ever used it is still slow but lightning fast by comparison and then the new makervs software that they have is still a little jargony and confusing for people like me that don't speak computer geek to figure out but it's a little easier to use and i think i can help you clear up some of the things and the questions that you might come across in your setup you hear that noise that really annoying high-pitched noise that's there on purpose they tell me because it's the motors talking to the computer blah blah blah some kind of thing and that's to keep everything sort of synced up not really sure i understand why we have to hear that but unfortunately that is a normal sound at first i thought it wasn't supposed to be making that sound and there was a problem but it is supposed to be making that sound it's how you know the machine is engaged if you put it into sleep mode it will go away now chris over at maker maid said well you know on the plus side it's the least noisy part of the machine when it's running which is true and you won't hear but it is annoying when you're doing your setup so just put in the sleep mode while you're doing all that and you don't have to listen to it i'm going to cut to a screen shot so you can see what i'm talking about right here in these instructions it starts talking about how to set up your software basically you download it and that's it except for you have to calibrate the machine there's a bunch of stuff in here that was a little confusing to me about like dollar sign 102 equals 472.5 these are all the different sections there's this is the connection section which you will have to do first you'll have to find the usb port that you're in and make sure it's open this is the console section this is where you type in that right here that dollar sign 472.5 equals 102. i'm not going to do it because i've already done it but um and all that does is it gets your motor basically set up to where it needs to be and this here is our calibration if you are setting up the machine is typical four foot by eight foot fashion the workspace and machine settings are all set and this is the configuration which we're going to get to in a minute but let me show you the rest of the software over here is where you will see your g-code i can actually drop some in so you can see what it looks like this is where you'll see what you're cutting and this is how you'll stop and start the file when it's running the um over here these are the keys that you can use to jog your machine and you can change in the unit amount that you move it by going here up here this is showing where my machine is right now my x-axis my y-axis and my z so x is the one that goes left to right y goes up and down and z is depth when i have all those centered and where i want them i would click this button here that says set home and that that'll make that the home base so once i start cutting if i screw up i can go back there and start over again but if i ever touch this button again i'm going to lose that i'm going to have a noose at home so don't accidentally click that when you mean to click go to home which are these buttons this button will take you home to the center of the board and this button will take your height home you know without a router bit in there without the router going click around experiment with it and feel it out and you'll figure it out this is they do plan on having a laser edition in the future so there's some laser information here i don't have that yet this looks like it is some type of depth probe that you could attach to it maybe um and if you were to have a spindle instead of a router you could actually control the speed of the spindle through here so the software is definitely bigger than the machine right now so let's do our calibration what i want to do is pick a distance on my machine travel it and then measure it and see what it actually moves so for example if i want to move 100 millimeters and and i move 100 millimeters and i measure it in the real world it was only 99 millimeters i would type 100 millimeters as my expected width and 99 is what i actually got and this will teach the machine how to correct itself so it will move the proper distance next time that's it now i've done it a couple times i'm going to do it again right now because i feel like every time i do it i get a little bit closer to better so how are we going to do this the first thing i'm going to do is go over to my controls here and i'm going to move my router to the left 100 degrees [Music] the instructions say to make a mark on this board and then move and make it you know make sure you'd like put a little mark right here and then move it and put a little mark again and then measure this with the marks lining up with a specific point on this waste board but i don't think that's the most accurate way to do it because this board when it travels does this a little bit so what i'm going to do is i'm going to turn my router on and just manually drive this little cutter into my wasteboard a tiny bit just to mark it pull it out and then mark that with a pen so i can see it so a little tiny dot i made right there that's my first point now in my software i'm going to move to the right i'm going to go 500 i feel like a big distance is going to help me get a more accurate reading so i'm going to move my z to the right 500 millimeters now i'm going to drill a little tiny hole cut her out of the way and now i measure the distance between these two dots i traveled 500 millimeters from here to here so the machine is perfectly calibrated that will be exactly 500 millimeters and we can see that it is i want to be as accurate as possible on my dots and i'm actually at about 510 millimeters so i go to my software type i expected 500 and i traveled 510. save and we can do it up and down and we want to do the z as well that's the basic idea of what that's saying it's really complicated to read it but i thought if i showed it to you it would make more sense after calibrating i ran some tests i cut a bunch of circles in varying depths and then measured them what i decided to do was just do a bunch of circles starting at one tenth of an inch two tenths three tenths four tenths five inch deep and then a final profile cut of the full thickness which is about three quarters of an inch and i put two 0.35 inch tabs on it it's blowing my mind 0.102 0.2 almost exact 2 0 0 0.32 so that side seems to be a little deeper i mean again it could be the wood 0.3065 so we got 0.39 inches wide and 0.31 inches deep um yep five four point five little that was a little off this is better than i expected maker makermate used to run an ad with a picture of a guitar partially cut out on the cnc and this ad got hundreds of hate comments of people claiming the machine could never have the accuracy to cut out a guitar challenge accepted i thought and so last year at the catskill mountain makers camp i met up with them and i made a guitar live at the event on the original maslow i sliced eight layers of guitars from holocore doors and laminated them together to make like a semi-hollow body then i bolted a neck and some other parts onto it and each piece fit together seamlessly it all worked out great but that wasn't good enough for the haters they said it wasn't a real guitar because it wasn't made in a traditional way from a block of wood so with these new z upgrades i set out to make a real guitar a one-piece headless seven-string two-sided guitar card from reclaimed chestnut i started with a 1.5 inch blank and centered it on the waste board i built a frame around it from 2x4 so that my sled wouldn't tip off when cutting close to the edge i drove the sled around a bit to make sure everything was cool after setting this thing up and tinkering with it just a little bit it's impressed the heck out of me and i think i might change my plan i'm going to try something different here originally the idea was i have this 3d model that i created that i've carved in the past on my avid cnc and so the plan was over here to just do the roughing tool paths of it did not do the full 3d carve but just clear away most of the wood and then finish it by hand but i think this thing might be able to 3d carve so i'm going to just create a little spot maybe up here out of the way uh to test it and see what happens the way i like to check to make sure i'm zeroed in is i use my square it doesn't have to be and i can see that i can feel that the end mill is sticking out below just a skoshe just like a hundredth of an inch so that i can adjust on the software [Music] that feels pretty much perfect now we'll import our 3d finishing path it's showing up let's see what happens have a look that is not a bad 3d car can you see that i might 3d carve this whole guitar okay i have put an end mill back in i have reset and re-zeroed and checked everything all out to where i want it looks good and i'm going to run all of my top cuts which are all 2d cutting pads but i do have a fluting tool path here that's going to lower the neck and have it come up to give it like an angle not too much on this one so this is a really good place to start and then after i do that i'll flip it and i'll start getting into the more complicated stuff fingers crossed yeah so these pickup holes are five one hundredths of an inch deeper than they're supposed to be but then this hole is is only two 100 of an inch deeper than it's supposed to be i mean we're in the ballpark like these are all within the tolerances of making a guitar now that i've done all the cutting i need to do on this side i need to unscrew everything i'm going to set this weight this right down on the waste board to drill these three holes into the waste board here so i can use that to position my piece and make sure it's straight screw it back in put my braces back on then set it up and do the back after cutting the first side it was a little tricky getting the blank up on the pegs that i drilled into the wasteboard then i began running the 2d cut tool pads on the back of the guitar i started checking some depths as i went and everything looked good i was particularly impressed with how well the tremolo hole that passes through the body lines up that was cut halfway through from the front and then the rest of the way through from the back i'm not going to lie to you this is some pretty advanced cnc modeling and coding going on here to create these very complicated and precise files you got to work your way up to this stuff the m2 is not really designed to do this sort of work either but i'm trying to push it to its absolute limits if you want a cnc to make 3d carved guitars all day this is probably not the machine for you but it can do it i used a quarter-inch ball nose to do the 3d carving and it took a few hours whereas my avid would have easily done it in probably less than an hour that worked incredibly well this is a perfect finish and um so now i'm going to try to do the body but i don't want to do the whole body partly for time and partly i want to keep it as thick as possible here for the hardware i have so i just created a tool path that's just going to smooth out this edge a little bit and i'll still have some stuff to do by hand but like i said i was planning on doing this all by hand because i didn't think this machine could hang this looks great now i'm going to do the final profile cut i gotta switch my end mill [Music] this upgraded m2 kit retails for about a thousand dollars so if you're starting from scratch just start there and i also have a coupon code which is tim sway 15 that'll save you 15 off your purchases and this makes this a ridiculously good price for what this machine does yes you're going to need to buy some plywood and some screws and bolts and stuff and a router but with my 15 savings you're still going to be under a thousand dollars to have this thing up and running if you already have the old version go to makermade.com and just order the upgrade kit for 379 dollars that has all the crucial hardware you'll need to make most of these changes just not the fancy blue sled that has the dust collection port on it but now check this out i did some surfing on their site and in the spirit of the maslow which is all about diy and saving a buck while supplies lash you can buy the original maslow machine on makermade.com for 500 bucks still use my coupon code and then buy the upgrade kit for 379 to save yourself more than a hundred dollars versus buying the new m2 this will mean a little more work for you to set it up and you'll have to make your own sled and stuff but if you're into spending elbow grease and time over money this is your deal somewhere in the middle of that you can also buy the maslow jumpstart kit which already has a sled cut out and you'll just need to make some minor modifications to that and save yourself a little less money but still less than buying the m2 kit me personally i would just buy the kit as is because it was super simple to put together but any way you look at it use my code and get in the game this is a great way to do it to really push my luck i thought i'd try and cut out my fingerboard on here too i figured i'd just do a simple line scores for the frets i'll cut out later with a saw put some position markers do a 16 inch radius but i needed to secure this to the waste board and then keep the sled level on the small piece of wood too so i created this little frame using ca glue and masking tape to hold the board to it and then i put this plywood frame around it that i would then balance the maslow sled on the way i set my z height this time is i got everything all lined up exactly how i wanted it and now i'm just with my end mill i know it's hard to see on camera with my end mill loose in here i'm just sliding it up so it's actually touching the surface of the material and i'm tightening it with it touching it right there because i'm going below the waste board didn't quite cut all the way here it was a little bit low here there i was pushing on the machine there a little bit um but we're pretty close uh i think what it is is that the waste board is not perfectly level and i was trying to do stuff you know to the hundredth or thousandth of an inch and so it just you know that's not a precision wasteboard for doing that but it did pretty well it got me part of the way there so i just pulled this off and i was just measuring it and it looks like i'm just a scotch off you can see this is the same scale fingerboard cut on my other cnc the question is i can see my scales came out a little bit longer and my question is is whether it's consistently longer so i could actually still use this fingerboard as is and i'm not sure i think my guitar might end up not being very well intonated if i were to use this fingerboard so i'm probably going to cut another one while we're on the accuracy gravy train while this seems to be a little bit off i can see when i put my fingerboard on i can see the widths of the fingerboard are are pretty much correct obviously i have some sanding and some shaping to do there i can see that my bridge pocket all lined up perfectly and my tremolo is going to work it'll actually be a little higher the tremolo is going to work and i can see that my pickup pockets came out perfect um so yeah well the accuracy may not be there for doing something as precise as a guitar fingerboard it's there for everything else before giving up and cutting a fingerboard on my other cnc i decided to try one more time and see if i could get a perfect fingerboard okay moment of truth this looks pretty good there was this couple spots you can see like right there and there that i got a little squiggly and it was because i think that there was a like a rough spot going over the screw on the waistboard i made to hold this in place so you need to be very very careful because just a little bump will loosen your sailing this is a 25 and a half inch scale and each one of these frets needs to be spaced properly to within like the 100th of an inch and the easiest way to check to see if they're accurate is to measure from the very beginning to the 12th fret which would be 12.75 inches if it is accurate it's pretty close it is still a little but it's closer than the other one it's only about a sixteenth off let's compare it to this fingerboard yeah it shifts off a little bit so it seems to be but it seems to be consistently shifting so i think what i ended up doing is making a guitar scale that is just a little bit longer than 25 and a half inches which will be okay because i can correct for that but we can see it's definitely better than this one this is just off the machine i just started putting some epoxy in the holes but nothing else no sanding yet now i know contrary to popular belief cnc's are not magic boxes that just make things for you besides the hours of work i have into the coding and the filing of this there's still a ton of actual physical hand work that goes into making this a functional guitar if you want to see me do that you're going to have to wait for a future video where i put this together and make it sing and that will be coming soon it'll be more of my usual type of build video but with a twist i'm hoping so stay tuned thank you for watching and thanks maker made for sponsoring this guitar build and making cnc accessible and affordable to more people than ever i really appreciate it and i hope you do too thank you very much and be good

Channel: tim sway

Views: 159,314

Keywords: guitar, bass guitar, luthier, diy, electric guitar, reclaimed wood, upcycle, repurpose, custom, maker, cnc, maslow, makermade

Id: C5srJPPhixU

Length: 21min 17sec (1277 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 24 2020