Official Luthiers Forum!

Plusses, minuses, issues? I am thinking more for engraving. Not cutting bodies.

Mike

There has been complaints about it not working correctly but they might have worked that out by now as it was well over a year ago I was checking them out. But it's limited to I think 1" depth and certain bits. It's also noisy as hell. I can't figure out why they don't put a decent router on it??? From what I can tell you would be better off putting your money towards CNC Router and software and your time into learning that software then getting the Carvewright. You can do a whole lot more with a CNC router and the CarveWright isn't built for commercial grade work. Like you said you just want it for engraving. Well first it won't give you the fine line cuts that gravers will just like it won't carve wood like chisels and gouges will. You would really be better off putting your time and money into a set of good carving and engraving tools and your time into learning that craft. Well at least that's what I'm going to do. And save up for the CNC router. You can do it Mike. I even got plans over at the CNC Zone for a router.

I own one. It's not the greatest of machines. I do carve electric guitar bodies with it, but that is about it for use with instruments. It's great for adding carvings to your woodworking projects. The software is very user friendly, now they have a STL importer so you can divide up a carving to make it 3d. On the carvewright forum someone posted three programs for doing a Les Paul Body. It was three programs because of the limited cut depth that Chris mentioned. The picture is of one of my guitar bodies as it looks in the program, and the carved body completed. I also use it to carve my headstock overlay with my logo.

How well would it work for inlay on a peghead or fretboard?

OK, I do not intend to do stuff that complex. I am looking for a solution to carving inlays on pegheads and so on. Thought if I could come up with a deal on one of these, it might be worth it. I have a person I can go to for laser carving, but I am more of a PITA to her for my onesie twosies its not really worth it.

If there were a smaller, cheaper, simpler way to do this, I would be interested. Like a metal template and a dremel? I mean, How do guys carve those darn snowflake inlay holes?

Mike

One of Chris Paulick's buddies in Florida made a pantograph that was real cool and looked simple. Hey, Chris, do you have the link to that thread?

That link is in one of my threads, I think it had to do with my harp guitar and the weird cut I needed to make...

Here it is viewtopic.php?f=10101&t=24453 (at the bottom of the thread)

Mike

I studied that pantograph the Chris made a video of. I still want that Kerfing machine that Keith makes!!! He is one smart guy. I will be getting one of his kerf machines, no doubt. Thats one I would care not to try and dupilicate.

But the pantograph, thats another thing altogether.

Couple of questions (Chris, if you are reading this). How does one keep the centerline with a tapered fingerboard? And. Given that FBs are radiused, and the pantograph only operates in a plane, what do you do here? Cut shallow and sand the shell down (which is entirely reasonable to me)?

Mike

Where did Keith find the Sioux Air Router?

Mike

I haven't tried it on inlays, but on the carvewright forum there is a guy who builds his guitars exclusively with the carvewright, he has done inlays on the fret board and used inlace as the inlay material. I just looked at his web site and he has done headstock inlays with the carvewright. http://www.liquidguitars.com/html/carving.html

I've made metal templates for a few guys with duplicarvers (positive and negative copies of the inlay).

Some get inlays CNC cut and just use the templates to cut the pockets, others use templates for both.

_________________
Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

Sorry but I thought I subscribed to this but didn't. John Hall from Blues Creek sales the mini die grinders, both the 75K and a 56K(red) for the duplicater.
Depending on the radius of the fret board radius I don't think it matters if the shell sits a little proud and you sand it to finish radius. If you make it about .005" deeper and cover it with CA it would also work. With small pieces like stars you aren't going to loose much if anything if it's deep. You could also inlay it before radiusing. Depends on how you radius your boards.
And then I suppose you could make a small shoe/donut for the cutter and set the depth and let it ride on the work. I don't think that little bit of an angle of the cutter rising and lowering would be noticeable. Or you might be able to mount the cutter with a shoe on a system like Williams binding jig.
Here's a drawing I just did up to give you an idea of what I'm talking about. I might use this idea for both the cutter and stylus and connect them with a arm of some sort that I can use when nessacary. You know I'm giving away some of my R&D. I might start on mine if iIsale some more of my Center Line Finders . If your not in to much of a hurry maybe you can wait for me to finish mine.

Come to think of it . You would need a bar between both a cutter mount and a stylus mount of the same configuation wor it too work. And they probably shouldn't be too far apart which would work fine for a fretboard. The normal mount work fine for a flat surface. Or you could design something on the line of the Ribbeke binding machine.
But I'd think you probably don't have to worry about or the shoe idea would work. I'm still Researching the thing. Can you tell?

"Couple of questions (Chris, if you are reading this). How does one keep the centerline with a tapered fingerboard? And. Given that FBs are radiused, and the pantograph only operates in a plane, what do you do here? Cut shallow and sand the shell down (which is entirely reasonable to me)?

Mike"

--------------

On my duplicator (pantagraph) base I scribe a line front to back and DBL tape the fingerboard centered over that line.
As far as the radius is concerned I set my depth of cut cut so that the center of the inlay is even with the center of
my fingerbord then sand the shell down to the radius. After all the bottom of the shell is flat so our choices here are limited.

_________________
Keith MacKenzie
Location: Florida
"To err is human to really screw up you need tools"

You probably don't have that much problem with the sanding on small inlays anyway, do you? I can see it having more sanding on a block fret marker in a 12 radius board. I guess it's the same even with bottom of the cavity routed on a radius. Like you said the shell is flat. When I do a large piece made up of many smaller pieces I'll put wax paper over a radius sanding block and lay the pieces face down on the block and glue them together as one big piece with CA and then inlay that one big piece with the radius built into it.

Ahhhh, double tape to a centerline. Of course. But ya got to admit, pulling it off and repositioning could be a pain. Still, I love the simplicity of this machine and plan on building one. Perhaps a sliding "table" under the mechanism might be in order? Keith, do you superglue the friendly plastic to the block?

My original questions have been answered. Thanx.

But I have one more. What is the material you used for the hinged boards? Is that wood covered with melamine or formica? Nice pattern... almost looks like metal.

Chris, thanks for the offer, but I am going to go ahead and build one. This one looks fun.

Mike

I ordered the info packet from them a while back and the things that turned me off to it are 1-its small limited size. 2- It's special bit that are not standard and 3- Its non standard proprietary software. It's not compatible with standard cad programs like Autocad or Rhino. 4-pretty expensive for a limited machine....Mike
PS I have been looking at the CNC shark. Anyone own one? If so your opinions..Thanks

The price difference VS a servo K2 (24x14) is pretty small, and the K2 is a much nicer machine. The Shark does include software (VCarve Pro) that the K2 doesn't, but it's not software you'll end up using for guitar parts so that's a moot point.

_________________
Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

The material was universal phenolic sheet 1/2" thick from Woodcraft. It's the stuff used to make tablesaw inserts.
BK-1 in the URL is similar.

http://www.poetryconnection.net/B000289556/Leecraft_BK-1_Blank_Phenolic_Sheet.html

I have found that the friendly plastic bonds when hot to my small plywood block, no CA required.

As for fingerboard attachment, lots of way to skin that cat, design away.

One note of caution make sure that the slide pairs are absolutely parallel to each other.

Good luck and have fun.

_________________
Keith MacKenzie
Location: Florida
"To err is human to really screw up you need tools"

Thanks Keith. Mechanical Engineer? I am. Love your work.

Mike

EE but I have done lots of ME in my work.

_________________
Keith MacKenzie
Location: Florida
"To err is human to really screw up you need tools"