Official Luthiers Forum!

I am going to roberto-venn luthier school in a about 2 months, i have built a couple guitars that are nothing to write home about. I thought I had a decent grasp on what is going on when building a guitar.......

I then come to the CNC section and see all this amazing stuff you guys are doing with these machines, my question is basic and i probably could have found the answer somewhere else in the posts but id rather get responses..... Did any of you take CAD clases or something like that to learn this stuff or do you buy these machines and read the manuel and go to work?? It is amazing to me and i think this type of stuff would sell instruments fast, not that thats all im worried about but i do want to do this for a living and i feel I need to learn this..................... Any and all input would be great

I'm sure that you'll get all types of responses to this question. Here's mine. I had nearly 25 years of guitar building experience before I built my first cnc router. I built it primarily to ease the amount of arm use due to repetitive motion injury. It didn't take long for me to see that I could do other things that I never dreamed of. If you intend to build guitars for a living, CNC will be a benefit, but you really probably should know how to build a good guitar first without one, as the machine is just another tool in the arsenal that you can use to get you there a bit faster and perhaps more accurately.
Really, the CNC is best on multiple parts of the same kind when you factor in the time involved in drawing and tweaking of the programs you need. If you intend to make different guitars then you need different gcode for the different parts that you change. This will involve tweaking of both your drawing and perhaps the gcode to achieve it. You will need to learn skills to complete, finish, and set up the guitar. Current cnc machines and computers that you can afford can't subsitute for the human aspect of this part of the process although who is to say that 5 years down the road they won't be able to.. Can you build a guitar without the knowledge of doing it by hand? Probably, but you might be surprised at how much you can learn by having someone with the background teach you how do it. If I had to do it again, I'd get the training and then some experience, and finally the cnc. YMMV
Marty

I've been doing CAD since high school - so about 17 years. I'm a mechanical engineer by trade and I draw/model in CAD almost every day. I learned guitar design, guitar building, and CNC work while working in the R&D department at Paul Reed Smith Guitars here in Maryland. I worked there for a few years and have since switched jobs...but still do CNC & guitar work in my home shop.

Trev

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http://www.PeakeGuitars.com

I am not doing any CNC work related to my lutherie. That said I too am a mechanical engineer and have been working with CAD-CAM and CNC machining since 1972. While attend college I worked par time as a CNC programmer and machinist for several years back in the days when you had to create a punch tape to program all CNC machines. So I have seen the development of CNC change quite a bit over the years.

Truth is if you want to learn CNC operation and programming find a community college that has a class specifically orientated to CNC programming and operation or CAD-CAM design and programming. Most of the community college CAD classes will only take you through basic CAD drafting and teach nothing in regards to CNC or CAM programming. Now CAD drafting will be helpful but you are not likely to get any CNC programming skill from the typical cad studies class.

Ya know the middle of nowhere? Well I live about 500 miles west of that! We have a community college but it does not have regular CAD, let alone CNC courses. There are 3 CNC machines in my community of 12,000, that I know of, counting mine. I have no CAD background, when I was in High School I took a drafting course, we kept our pencils sharp to get that even line weight...no computers! (I am only 48 years old!!). So now I have a CNC Machine, Rhino and MadCAM. The learning curve is steep but I really don't think computer very well and I think younger people are less intimidated by the things. Don't get me wrong I have been using computers pretty much since they were available but for WORD/Wordperfect and Excel and stuff like that.

So, you can do it with a little help from your friends (mine live on this board...THANKS GUYS!!) but it is an immersion to get at this stuff in a meaningful way!

Shane

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Canada

Thanks for the excellet feedback, dont get me wrong though im not looking to get into cnc machines or anything.... yet.... i was just curious about this stuff and how many people here know about it. I think if i ever want to dive in I will take a community college class on it, that sounds like good advice. Thanks Again!

I would recommend against college courses. From what I've seen, at least at the four institutions here that teach CAD in some regard, you'd be better served using the money to buy your CAD software. The only students I've seen that came out with enough skills to not be a liability spent most of their time teaching themselves at home. Colleges also tend to teach AutoCAD which is rubbish for the price.

The Rhino manual, and tuturials, are quite extensive and there's a huge online community who'll help you out with it (their newsgroup is amazing, and people will help you fast 24/7). Similarly with Solidworks (so far as online resources).

I've got my own biases: I'm self-taught in Rhino, Visual Mill, Inventor, Solidworks, and MasterCAM. I think that so long as you can find someone to walk you through those first few clicks in a new piece of software, that you can sort of roll on your own after that with some tenacity and judicious use of the help files (which tend to be very good in these sorts of programs)

If you're planning on ever getting into CAD/CAM and you can spare some cash (or, better, if you can get an educational license...) then I'd absolutely suggest getting Moi3D (less expensive, still very good) or Rhino (more powerful) and starting to learn. The ability to make good drawings and 'check if things fit together like you think they do' in CAD is a huge benefit whether you will be making the parts with CNC or not. I designed my first guitar in AutoCAD, years before I'd even seen a CNC.

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

Yep, it's like anything else....just gotta get your time in. I'm also not a huge fan of taking a class to learn this stuff...but I think it is immensely useful to have someone you can "piggyback" off of to get up and running.

Trev

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http://www.PeakeGuitars.com

I Totally agree with Bob and others....

Any CAD package these days comes with some very good and easy to follow instructions. The best way to learn is to jump with both feet in it.....that is exactly the way I did it, and have never looked back....

In addition, forums like this one, and cnczone (among others) have some very knowledgeable people who are doing the same exact things, and I have learned a ton by participating and observing discussions. Also, if there are questions, there are many people always very willing to answer them and help....

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-CyborgCNC
http://www.cncguitar.com
https://www.facebook.com/CncGuitar

Forgive me if I overlooked this in a previous post, but test driving a conversational cnc machine might be a good idea to get your feet wet with cnc. A conversational machine is programmed in a very simple fashion with the control asking for the specific data it needs and translating that info into something usable for the machine. I prefer g-code (can be complicated, but ultimately versatile). Some machines; hurco ultimax for example, are capable of programming complex 3d shapes with answering just a few questions. Working on a hurco it took me about 2 minutes at the control to program a 3D form very similar to a guitar neck, including roughing and finishing passes. I can't stress enough how important it is to learn as much about these machines, and every function of them before ever touching one. There's eons worth of things one must learn to be masterful at using a cnc machine, and automated tooling in general. If after the conversational experience you find yourself very driven to the idea of it all, I implore you to learn G-code. Conversational machines are nice, but they can be unbearably crippled by what they can't do that a standard g-code reading control will be capable of (I'm talking 3d work primarily, subtleties everywhere else).

I'll give you free cnc lessons if you'd fax me all your luthier school notes! Good luck with it all.