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First thing, like with all maker machines, is to make something to help use the machine. I made some holding pins out of 3mm ply
Then i used those to hold a bigger sheet to make a wedding lantern
Now onto the first guitar task - headplates. I picked out some wood first. The maple is actually 4.5mm thick, walnut is rough sawn and varies from 2 to 3.5mm
it worked really well. It would obviously look better if i had thicknessed them first, but as proof of concept this is great
an edge shot of the maple, this is a good cut, no burning to speak of
For reference, the maple was cut at 300mm/m, 80% power, 2 passes. That took about 5 minutes. The thinner walnut only needed one pass, so half the time.
The ply cut in one pass up to 500mm/m. It didn't quite make it all the way through at 600mm/m. The lantern took about 35mins in total, but has a lot of detail to cut
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Diode laser's aren't that powerful in comparison, but can still do a lot of damage. However the beam should only ever point directly at the workpiece, and the biggest risk is it being reflected off something.
CO2's on the other hand bounce the beam of a few mirrors, so there is a greater risk of the beam pointing somewhere it shouldn't.
You can use whatever colour safety glasses you like. The shade just kills the brightness, it's the plastic that is enough to diffuse the beam and prevent permanent damage. Just like welding masks, it's the glass that stops the damaging rays burning your eyeball, the shade just makes it so you don't get blinded by the brightness and can see what is actually going on.
I've just spent the evening laying out a true 24 3/4" scale length, calculated with a straight rule of 18.
Took about 30 mins in excel and inkscape to lay out something bespoke like this. It says it will be 12 minutes cutting time to give me a board with marked/engraved fretslots and the inlays and board cut out.
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Great tools to play with!
This was a bit trickier. it did cut through the ply at the recommended settings, but I found it gave a cleaner cut going a bit faster and doing 2 or 3 passes... So it's not fast, but it does work.
The speed was not helped by my design. The outlines of each template overlap so it follows that path twice
Anyway. I got a batch of pickup templates out of the test
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It's more of the 6mm ply. The laser does do it in one pass, but at reasonable speeds it's better to plan for 2. It cuts better on the Y axis, due to the shape of the laser beam I think. Also that was following the grain so less variation in density
And parts fit as planned... just waiting on the rest of it
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Maple at 8mm and Granadillo at 7mm
Engraving fretslots deep enough to finish with a saw was a success.
Cutting the maple worked well. The granadillo started to give off some oils and charred a bit more. I accidently moved both during the tests so gave in for the day.
I think for marking frets, inalys and outlines it will definitely work well... not sure yet if it is worth cutting them out this way bit will play with more settings to see what it can do.
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Ebay mark7777_1
(formerly customkits)
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I will try some other materials soon too
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They're time consuming too
(formerly customkits)
The first step is to download something like Inkscape and start drawing something simple.
That's why I did pickup templates first, simple shapes, and I can then re-use them when doing full guitar designs.
First efforts on guitar shapes were pretty poor, but it didn't take long to get them looking better.
The laser software is straightforward.
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(formerly customkits)
Many plastics can release toxic gases when cut with the laser.
It should also do coloured acrylic, but not clear
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lots of learnings here.
This machine claims to do 6mm in one pass, and it can, but it does it much better in 2 or 4... so a body template I taking about 40mins to cut and be sure it has cut cleanly. Basically, if you think its done in 2 or 3, do an extra pass to be sure
The ply worked better than the HDF, it was struggling to get through the last bit on that harder material.
laser focal depth is important. it cuts to about 4mm in one pass at the speeds I was using today, then the second pass gets it to 5mm, 3rd gets it to 6mm, 4th gets it cleanly through at 6mm. clearly the laser is losing focus at that cutting distance. I don;t think this will do much more than 7-8mm however many passes you do, it will just start burning the bottom of the slot it has made. The 20w version should get a body template made in 15-20 mins.
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All the holes line up with the body template, but the plate shape itself is offset to the bass side
i did wonder if the laser had lost steps between cutting the holes and outline, but thankfully it was a design error in inkscape on my part.
I also set the nut width on the headstock template to 40mm... ???
both now corrected and will be recut at some point
the biggest shock is that i posted a pic of a corvus template last night without even a lol.;)
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