There are lots of machines out there and I don't keep up with them. If you are thinking of becoming the neck big aftermarket parts supplier, you should look for something with a lot of extrusion or steel, supported linear guides and ball screws. If you are only going to do a couple necks and bodies a year, the x carve should do it. If you want industrial quality, then you probably will pay 4-8000 dollars for a machine large enough to do a neck. The x carve is an entry level machine with an entry level price. I am a firm believer in you get what you pay for. The perimeter cut, the taper, the dot holes,and the peghead holes are just like this. The reasoning behind this is that 3D is way slower than 2.5 D for what I'm doing. The fretboard fret slot scribing,and the truss rod slot is a hybrid I came up with of both 3d and 2.5 D in one file. The perimeter cut, the taper, the 3 degree angle slot, the dot holes,and the peghead holes are just like this. The rest is just 2.5 D where the process moves to X and Y coordinates and the cutter moves up and down as needed. I used meshcam to generate the gcode for those processes. To make this neck I'm combining some 3 d processes with some 2.5 d processes.ģD is involved with making the fretboard radius, the peghead thickness, and the neck carve. I just copy and past the fret slot gcode for each y distance.Ĭombined this gives me the whole path for cutting/scribing each fret slot at the specific distance it needs to be.Īs I said earlier, it's a way to do it and there may be an easier way, but when you get used to it, it doesn't take that much time.
I introduce the fret spacing to the mix by adding in the distances from the nut slot to each fret as a Y code. This is how it will follow the curve of the fretslot. That is then the gcode for one fret slot. X being left to right and Z being up and down. So if I run the program in X carve, the cutter will move to the x and z coordinates. My machine will not move in the Y direction because there isn't any y yet.
Now the ends of the line segments have an X and Z coordinate. I take that file and using the notepad app on the computer, I replace each letter Y with a Letter Z. The tool path comes out a bunch of lines with starting and stopping points along the curve.Įach end of each little line has an x and y coordinate.
ADD STOCK TO CAMBAM SERIES
Remember it looks like one curve, but is really a series of 30 short line segments all attached together. Now the radius fret slot curve is on its side in the drawing, not facing the ceiling like it would in the real world. I draw the arc in the top view of the 3 views ( top, front, and side) where the gcode coordinates will come out as X's and Y's. This means I just do it the way I've done it for 15 years. It may indeed do 3d in all 3 planes but I have no experience with it and the cambam documentation frustrates me to no end. My experience with the older version of Cambam is that it can handle the 2d ( xy plane) conversion pretty well. There is an xy plane, a zy plane, and a zx plane.
ADD STOCK TO CAMBAM SOFTWARE
Y is front to back of the machine and X is left and right.ģD software like Meshcam can handle all surfaces in 3 planes with no problem. The z is the cutter depth, and the software will move the cutter up or down a specified depth that you choose.
When you have a 2.5d drawing, the lines and points have coordinates in an x and y format, like on a cartesian graph.