CNC woodworking....

[Orange Vise]

A VMC is pretty ideal for guitar building. They're a lot more accurate than the typical router, and the enclosure eliminates the need for a dust shroud so you can actually see what you're cutting. Very important for any sort of contouring operation.

You also have access to the full standard list of G and M-codes, which are often absent on a lot of routers. Our Multicam Apex 3R has no canned cycles at all. Drilling is done with G01s.

 

[macgyver]

What, if I may ask, are you doing with a router? Packaging? Plastics?

 

[Orange Vise]

Sanding tasks are something I'd be very intrigued about automating on a cnc if possible. I work mostly with solid wood and don't have a cnc yet, but if sanding was a task I could successfully automate I would strongly consider a cnc table in the near future.

Rough sanding is definitely possible, especially with the wheel and cup style brushes, but it's not going to come close to matching the quality coming off a Festool ETS-150 or equivalent ROS in the hands of an experienced worker.

I think the closest you'll get to that finish is with a machine like the Fladder Gyro because it provides a semi-random scratch pattern. You're just not going to get that with a table router.

I wouldn't base your CNC purchase decision on the ability to sand, because you'll likely be disappointed with the results.

 

[Orange Vise]

What, if I may ask, are you doing with a router? Packaging? Plastics?

Yup, packaging, especially particleboard/plywood trays to which our vises and pallets are banded, before palletizing for freight shipment.

The machine will also cut all sorts of corrugated and honeycomb materials using a drag knife with servo rotation.

 

[anchorman]

They type of router a person would use for sheet goods and the type that would be ideal for making necks is not at all the same. I imagine with a 4th axis on one of the routers set up for sheet goods, you could make quick work of cutting and shaping necks, but a small machine like a mill with a high speed spindle would be better suited, IMHO. Easier to access to load and unload parts, more rigid, and able to take bigger cuts in hardwoods, less wasted floor space, etc.

We've come a long way in terms of ease of designing and outputting code for complex parts from whenever those guitar guys started with their Fadal mills. And prices of very capable machines have gotten a lot lower too. The software originally available was so clumsy, and not capable of doing much more than outlines, pockets, and parallel clearing. We use Fusion 360 now, and though it is not without its issues, it is so much more capable (and easy to use) from design to cutting.

We're getting ready to buy a new 4'x8' machine at work, and will probably pay the same we did for our first machine nearly 20 years ago, and have much higher feeds, more rigidity, tool changers, etc built in.

 

[cosmos_275]

No idea what machine they use for the bodies here but not a router.

 

[anchorman]

No idea what machine they use for the bodies here but not a router.

looks like a router with vacuum table and a fixture to raise the height of the part off the table when they were milling the solid body guitar.

 

[DanielG]

I've done some programming for a local luthier. Tops, back, and fingerboards. We usually leave about a mm of extra material on the the inside and outside surface, but cut the purfling groove complete. He likes to do the finish work by hand and views the CNC as doing the roughing out work that an apprentice would have done. The machine is an inexpensive router from some Canadian company; I don't recall the name. It's not fast, but he's only making 10 or 15 instruments a year.

I think one of the biggest things holding back automation in woodworking is that things often aren't in CAD to begin with.

 

[cosmos_275]

looks like a router with vacuum table and a fixture to raise the height of the part off the table when they were milling the solid body guitar.

I was talking about the machine at 2:30. I would not call that a router.

 

[Scruffy887]

I was talking about the machine at 2:30. I would not call that a router.

View attachment 391274

That is a router. Many types were made that way with multiple indexing spindles instead of tool changers. CMS made a lot of them. I'm going to guess that those type machines were hard to fit with dust collection and an indexing head was more reliable that a hollow spindle filled with chips on a tool change. Machine in vid has no dust hood, but has dust room.

 

[Scruffy887]

EVOLUTION.JET - Bacci

EVOLUTION.JET is a highly flexible machining center both in terms of sizes customization and in terms of the number of working tables.

www.bacci.com

Possibly a Bacci as well. Italian machine just like CMS.

 

[MaherCNC]

I don't see much about CNC in this forum.

A few of my customers were in the musical instrument business. They used Fadal mills. The explanation I got was Taylor Guitars in California started with Fadals and others followed. Apparently because a good many of the earlier CNC woodworking machines were oriented to sheet goods and many with foreign controls which were difficult service- wise in this country.

For solid wood parts, guitar necks and bodies, the Fadal was ideal. Warmoth in my area has 3 or 4. They bought used and had the machines upgraded to 10,000 rpm spindles. I recall looking at the tool carousel of one of their machines, everything you could imagine, a spindle speeder, right angle head and so on. Any machinist would drool over the tooling.

Some objections you hear to machine tools in woodworking is the dust problem with lubrication and the lack of spindle rpm. The dust doesn't seem to be an issue, Fadal and Haas warranteed their new machines for woodworking. I always figured the machine rigidity more than made up for the typically lower rpm's. Now in retirement I use my 4,200 rpm CNC mill for hobby woodworking with good results. Where possible using wheel cutters give effective high cutting speeds.

Well, I started building a new kind of CNC machines for woodworiking and also woodturning, check out my channel to see them in action: https://www.youtube.com/@woodworkingandautomation.

And here one of them, it does not do guitares, but can do small parts in batch, like custom coasters, etc...