CNC woodworking....

[Doug]

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.

 

[mhajicek]

I programmed for Jim Olson in the late 90's, for his Fadal. 10K spindle IIRC. It worked great for his applications, and I believe he's still using the same machine.

 

[memphisjed]

bridgeport was designed as a woodworking machine that happened to cut metal. I have done a little wood cutting on mine with the 6000 rpm limit and router bits. It did not dissolve the mill. I turn off the mist/air and hold a shop vac near it.

 

[EmGo]

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.

Toys. Have you been to a woodworkng show ? They've got cnc woodworking machines that make a fadal look like a tinkertoy. Plus woodworking software has some different approaches because of the material. Alphacam used to specialize in that, Sandy Livingstone talked about it a little.

No one who is serious about production in wood would even consider a metalwarking machine. Waaaaaaaaay too slow and also wrong size envelope, wrong dust collection, wrong material holding, wrong moving-parts shielding, wrong work and spindle speeds, just wrong wrong wrong.

 

[wood2steel]

Agree with Emanuel, Woodworking really needs the high RPM. Most CNC wood productions shift to diamond edge tooling to tolerate the high speed. Brazed carbide is toast at those speeds when it meets the Composite materials such as MDF, etc

 

[macgyver]

I am not sure why there is not more discussion or even show and tell in the places I frequent online. I have not come across the same level of discussion about wood cnc machines as I see for metal, even woodweb is pretty slim to my thinking. Is it due to sheer volume of metal workers with cnc vs wood? Are most wood shops still mostly manual? I'd hope not, but they might be. Recently I was considering a used Italian machine and was hoping to learn some specifics about it without calling the manufacturer. Mainly wanted to see if it would do what I wanted and also see what hoops I'd have to jump through software wise etc. I ended up calling the mfg as the info I was wanting I didn't find. Now, I ask the same thing about a mill or lathe on here and I'll get an answer and it will usually be correct. Do woodworking companies hold their cards closer? Don't want to give up any secrets? IDK

I have spent over 20 years in the wood world now with all of it being using cnc woodworking machines daily. I'm pretty good in certain applications and of course have more to learn in others. There are many many different avenues one could take wood working and there seems to be a machine or two for each one. As EG said, going to a show like IWF or AWFS is an eye opening experience.

The material will dictate what route you want to take if you are wanting to specialize or focus. Sheet goods vs solid wood is a good start. Sheet goods will drive a shop to buy a machine with as big a table as you can afford and you will want as big a vac pump as you can get and of course a certain style table top to use that properly. The flat table machines are intended to be used to nest parts and cut out of a full sheet. Some even have loaders and unloaders that sweep the parts off the table when the cycle is done and will clean the table off before the new one is placed.

The other option is pod and rail machining centers, these are intended to be used with parts precut on a cnc panel saw, they are extremely quick to set up and are designed to be able to cut/drill the top face and all 4 edges in one op. They also automatically mirror a program if you choose to run it in the other zone so getting left and right parts is a dream. These lend themselves to pendulum running, if the part is within the length of one zone, you can swap parts on one side while the other is running so spindle up time is very high with a good operator. I have no experience with them but for awhile now they have had vertical feed through machines that can machine all 6 faces/edges of a part while it goes though the machine. No vacuum to hold it and they tend to have a small foot print. I'd like to play with one some time.

I've spent the last 3 years app once a week onsite helping a guitar shop get their wood shop up and running. They now have 2 routers and there have been a few things along the way that has made me understand why alot of the guitar manufacturers in the US use mills. The 2 main advantages I see of a mill over a router in a guitar cutting scenario is that a standard optioned mill will usually have a larger tool changer than a mid to lower end router. Second, and this depends on where you are in the country and what brand machine you buy, a dealer for a mill is likely closer to you than a cnc router mfg. For example, Haas has dealers in alot of places and they make a ton of machines. Even the biggest cnc router mfg companies don't have multiple dealers all over the US. Specifically I mean they don't have multiple locations that have techs and parts on hand to send out in their local area. They may have some dealers, but it is really just sales and all service and parts come from the home plant. Feel free to correct me on this if you know different. This means that when we have an issue that turns into needing a tech it runs into big money just to get them onsite. If you have a HFO 2 hrs away it 'could' be better. Depends on your love or hate for Haas.

One other consideration is volume of parts, I own an old multi spindle machine. It was somewhat the norm when it was built as I think most of the router companies where building for furniture factories where they were cutting a kajillion solid wood parts and the best way to do that was to throw spindles at them. Since I started working with the guitar shop I have spent time watching videos of other companies just to see what they do. There is more than one that uses multi spindle routers for their highest volume models.

 

[richard newman]

EG and W2S make a lot of sense, but they're wrong in the guitar manufacturing world. I don't know why, but the Fadal is the go-to cnc for a number of serious guitar manufacturers. I've also heard that Bob Taylor was the first to use them, and was very generous in sharing his experience and helping other makers adopt cnc.

Making guitars, especially acoustic guitars, is just so different from most other wood manufacturing.

Edit- I see macgyver was putting up some good thoughts from actual experience while I was typing. He mentions videos, I have seen a video from Taylor showing how they use their cncs, it's much more than just cutting out parts, worth a look.

 

[EmGo]

EG and W2S make a lot of sense, but they're wrong in the guitar manufacturing world.

I can accept that. It just seemed like he was headed off in the direction of "machining centers are good for woodworking" ... maybe for very low volumes but after you watch a real cnc woodworking machine fly thru stock, whooo boy

In fact, there's probably some italian woodworking machine that'd knock out guitar parts in minutes but I bet it would cost a half mil. The eyetalians seem to specialize in this field ?

(We only did one woodworking show but I was mighty impressed ... and the pole dancers were in the booth right next to us, which didn't hurt )

 

[Doug]

Calm down guys. Fadals seem to have become the standard of the industry, at least with the west coast biggies I made metal parts for. Mostly because Taylor started using them. Other guitar makers copied him, probably because of his success with Fadals plus their lack of experience with CNC's.

The Fadal decision was not made after extensive research of all types or brands of available woodworking CNC machines. It worked well for Taylor so others followed his lead. There seems to be a lot of sharing of ideas in the guitar industry. My connection to the west coast guitar industry was due to one customer's referrals to his competitors.

All of the CNC's I'm aware of in the guitar business are not Fadals. One 50+ employee shop that I know very well has a 5 axis Japanese Heinan (sp?) machine for necks. That machine was in the $500K range and was not specifically designed for wood. One shop replaced my work when I retired with an Omniturn complete with part loader and thread rolling. That shop also has a second Omniturn for turning dots in exotic woods. Another shop has a Motion Master heavily modified from the factory for cutting fret wire slots in necks.

Criticize all you want, but any shop owner would be envious of the money some of these guitar part makers are bringing in.

 

[richard newman]

Ken Parker, of Parker Fly fame, used a Fadal for that business, for the reasons above. But now he's making super high end archtop guitars in a small shop, and has bought an Okuma.

 

[macgyver]

I don't know Fadals well enough, but my guess is they may have more memory capacity than say an early Fanuc. That is the main reason I didn't recommend a Fanuc controlled mill to these guys, we need to do surfacing of the arm and belly reliefs which amounts to a bunch of code.

I have seen multiple shops with newer Haas VF4's in them with most having at least one with a 4th for the neck work. Out of all the videos I have seen with mills cutting guitars, I have not seen how they handle dust collection, I don't see any duct work or collectors on any of them. I am not sure if they are just precutting on saws so there is a small amount of chips or what. We started rough cutting on a bandsaw, then I decided to use the router for everything to eliminate operator error on the saw. Even with doing that it was generating more waste than I'd want to shovel out all the time..

Doug, that was probably a Heian cnc, they were/are pretty well regarded machines.. Stiles is the rep for them in the US.

 

[Doug]

It's worth a bit of time to check out Youtube for some of the factory tours of Taylor. Not your typical dusty wood shop. A few of the videos show the Fadals in action. Generally the degree of automation is surprising, like the robotic finish sprayers.

 

[Rocketdc]

Does anyone have experience running a random orbit sanding head or flex trim brush head on a pod and rail machine?

Are they effective enough to replace a hand held RO sander for finish sanding table tops and edges from 120 to 180?

 

[macgyver]

Rocket, that is a new one on me. I haven't seen that yet. I assume it is an aggregate head, or is it an add on option to the machine from the MTB?

I rigged up a wire wheel/brush on and aggregate head to do a distressing job once, it took a little guess and check to get the look they were going for, but once I dialed in the feed and speed it was a gravy job.

 

[Rocketdc]

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. Out of curiosity I searched for aftermarket options and found a couple examples, one is a 6" round head made by GUHDO which uses hook & loop attachment for the abrasive discs and another was a brush head made by flex trim.

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I looked at a 18-24" wide brush sander a few years ago and had flex trim run some tests on several samples of contoured pieces I was working on. Was pretty impressed overall, but that was a much larger 3 brush head machine so I'm not sure if the results would compare to the smaller heads for a cnc.

Maybe the cnc manufacturers have built in options that are better, I have no idea, never looked or enquired. Being a tiny operation I'm a little behind on automating processes and didn't pursue it when I was starting out, but now I'm trying to automate as much as possible as I move forward. I'd rather invest in machinery than employees and if sanding was a task that could also be accomplished successfully on the cnc table that would add even more value to a purchase like that. Would probably be looking at a used machine at this point, that's why I searched for aftermarket sanding options.

 

[macgyver]

That's cool, hadn't seen those before. Depending on the max rpm of that RO pad you would want to figure out how to make sure you can't accidently zing it up past max or you might be dodging it. I have tossed an edge finder tip before doing that...

Also, you can put pods on a flat table machine in case you weren't aware, give you more flexibility for nesting etc. Depending on the maker of the table there are aftermarket accessories that will plug and play, or you can make your own to fit your table grid.

Thinking about automating sanding, have you investigated a robot arm? Some of those can be had for much less than a router and you might/should be able to program it to do the edges too.

Are you doing or want to do lots of the same size tops?

 

[Rocketdc]

Not real familiar with the robot arms other than seeing a few videos.

I have a variety of different sized tops and shapes with varying edge treatments. Some of the square and rectangular pieces have rounded corners, a few different sized round tops and typically the edges get a round over from 1/8-1/4".

 

[Scruffy887]

I had a Weeke pod rail CNC with 42" x 109" travel and an Anderson 60" x 144" flat table machine in my woodworking shop. The Weeke had an internal shop floor programming mode that had a very short learning curve (if you knew any CAD and Excel). It was designed to program on the fly right at the machine. We had loads of parametric programs for cabinet parts. Many times call up a generic program for an end panel and change just the length. An end panel will have a groove for the back and rows of holes for shelf pins, holes for hardware, holes for dowels too. 6 tool typewriter magazine and 27 spindle gang drill bank, all drills independent. 12 HP router, but pod and rail machines are super fast for panels with 4 working zones, doable for some routing tasks. I was the first in my area to get a CNC. That machine went to the junk yard because it would take maybe 10k to fix, but I did not need it and at 26 years old nobody would buy it. In the end I connected air to it to help strip the aluminum rails off, but air hoses kept exploding. Sad because the mechanical part was very solid. Stiles wanted 14k for a new computer when the original crapped out. Pulled the hard drive out and found an old Dell and stuck it in. Back in business with everything functional because we used the same HD.
Anderson was a heavy duty router but was all G code and I programmed it in the office. Used only for some production jobs. It also had a small 5x5 drill bank that was a total PITA to program in Mastercam. It too was starting to have air hose bursting problems, but those problems belong to the new owner whoever he is. 10 tool rotary mag on the head that would get whacked once in a while by the retracting dust brush. Would not make a good guitar machine because Anderson had a very poor way of draining way lube away and it would spill out of the catch tray if you forgot to replace the huge wad of shop towels under the head.

 

[Scruffy887]

The sanding head is interesting but sanding takes time and visual inspection to get right. Any long CNC wood CNC operation would have the operator doing that. My operators loved to program the Weeke to do anything but I had to step in and squash many things that could be done by hand so much better and faster without tying up the machine.

 

[HHollow]

I was looking around for my first fadal and I was offered a Fadal 3016L that was used its whole life carving wood and composites (musical instruments). The cooling system was removed and parts of it lost.

What should a potential buyer of such a beast be most worried about? I am removely located and the Fadal is a mere 300 miles away, so I can not afford to overlook the thing.