LeftyBassist.com

Never thought of videos, but what a great idea! I don't care if you use Mike Tyson - as long as they're educational, and show your great basses in development!

Great idea! And don't forget to wear a lab coat in your videos to reinforce credibility. Works every time I'm unsure what new prescription drug I should consider trying next.

it's here!!!

I scheduled help for unloading as per the UPS on-line scheduled delivery date ... but it came a day early when I was here by myself the delivery guy came equipped with a pallette dolly and rolled the 385 pound crate into the shop



too bad I won't have opportunity to open the crate until Tue evening the suspense is just ...killing me

all the best,

R

It's a crate containing future happiness for me.

had a customer meeting wrap-up significantly early (in a very good way) ... and since I simply couldn't resist any longer, I took my lunch time to pop the lid off the crate and shoot a pair of reference images

one set-up configuration will be for body work. I'll have alignment pins located such that I can work each side of the body at a dedicated 'station'. you can see with this lefty M-Series 4-string body that two body stations can be side by side, allowing me to work with somewhat of a production line for a given body shape. some CAD time will tell if I'll be able to utilize a common set of pin locations for all my body designs




similarly I can set up a pair of stations to work the front and back sides of a neck.



back to work ...

all the best,

R

All I can say is - Wow! Can't wait to see pics of it in action so I can truly understand all of its functions....

Is there somewhere you can take your bodies and necks to have them scanned for data to build your programs or are you going to do it the old-fashioned way.

I'll utilize Rhino CAD to design everything vs. scanning. This allows me the ability to have all of the parent geometry modeled such that modifications can easily be propagated into the model.

If I were to simply scan the surface, any needed modifications would be significantly more difficult

All the best,

R

Ahhh, that Rod - always thinkin'!

I got the new 36" x 84" x 28"H work bench completed last night. the height is designed to give me a CNC table height of 33" - a pretty comfortable working height for my 6'-3" frame



I designed this so there's enough room to locate the Inca 10" planer/jointer on the end of the table now I need to run power conduits and recepticle boxes within the table frame so I won't have extension cords snaking all over the place

all the best,

R

the new K2 CNC and also the Inca 510 Jointer/Placer are loaded onto the new work bench



I'll start connecting up the computer hardware in the coming week

all the best,

R

This thread is a rolling train of awesome!

here's and angled view of one of my CAD files where you can see the 3D surface rendering of the gut-cut and neck heel contours for my 4/5-string M-Series bodies



this is just the CNC roughing cut - all of the finish contour shaping is completed by hand, and accounts for both comfort and the figuring of the body wood

since the control and battery box cavities are simple constant depth cuts, there is no requirement to model fully detail them in 3D prior to generating the CNC tool paths

all the best,

R

after what seemed like an unending stint of day-job business travel, and several basses in my backlog that needed to be completed before I could be distracted playing with new tools ... I finally have had a day to get the CNC installed and connected up







I need to get a UPS to protect the electronics, and then this is ready to fire up

I was beginning to think that this day was never going to come

all the best,

R

Forget JEJ, go for Alec Baldwin, other then thirty rock his career is pretty much behind him so he'll do it on the cheap and he has the smooth voice all the ladies love. On another note, when your single cuts go into production are they gonna have the same standard electronics layout that your Axiom and M-series have or are you gonna be going with the more "traditional" single cut layout of dual coils, a 3 band and a whole mess of switches? If its something youre keeping to yourself at the moment I apologize in advance. Oh and the birdseye burl redwood M-series 5 on your site is drop dead gorgeous, having said that, how will the CNC work with tops and core woods of different density, is that part of the experimenting you will be doing or do you not expect it to be an issue.

in the near term I will be getting myself proficient with a focus on just the bodies. once I am confident in my ability to construct good CAD models -> G-code and also in operating the machine without disasters (and wasted expensive wood) I'll start adding my necks to the mix.

here's a peek at a 4-string and a 5-string neck blank orientated on the table for size reference. you can see that there's a lot of extra length to what I can fit onto the table



one of the beauties of this machine is that its bed is large enough to run work areas that handle both sides of a body or neck. this will allow me to (hopefully) streamline my production efforts. still, a CNC is nothing more than like having a shop helper/apprentice ... I'll assign it all of the repetitious grunt work so that I can focus on finessing the details into the final part before finishing and then have added time to nuance the final assembled product. nothing ever goes directly from the CNC to paint to assembly


O ... and as of about two hours ago .... IT'S ALIVE!!!



(that's the Mach3 interface displayed on the screen)


the CNC is going to give me the flexibility to keep a library of pickup cavities and preamp configurations ready to roll for models where I've chosen to offer them as a more customized unit. exactly how this works itself into what I offer is yet to be worked out ... I may have a standard set of options, and then make certain aspects of the build totally customizable but with an offset to account for the added time spent on a non-standard option. then again I may see time savings to the place where I don't need to do this ... there's a lot left to be learned thru the actual doing


different woods can require different cutting strategies (feed rates, cut depth, spindle speeds, etc ...) and that's a large part of what I get to learn over the coming months. I'd like to believe that I can cut Alder with the same parameters that I can cut Swamp Ash, Mahogany, etc ... and that fancy tops can be handled like a body without one. I'm sure hoping this is true and that I don't end up with 1000 different G-code versions of each CAD model to simply cover all the different wood characteristics

all the best,

R

Does that puppy run on 120v or 240v or <shudders> 208v 3-phase?

it's all running on a single 110v 20A circuit. Inside that box with all the controller wires coming out of it is a monster transformer that converts A/C into 5v(?) D/C to drive the servo motors. the Porter Cable router is a standard 2-1/4HP unit you'd buy for regular shop use

if I ever upgrade or add a second unit, I'll probably go with a variable speed spindle unit that runs on 220v if for no other reason than I can cut faster and also add-on a tool changer. A tool changer would allow me to 'check out' each cutting tool as I need it, and I wouldn't have to manually change a cutter by hand and calibrate the Z depth. nice for speeding up the process where I need several different cutter tools for one side of a neck/body

all the best,

R

been playing with a demo version of RhinoCAM the past few days, and it's looking like this could easily handle what I need to take the RhinoCAD models and turn them into machine code

here's an image of the rear side perimeter and gut-cut after cutting simulation. I'd post a video clip if I had a way to capture the screen display on my laptop. the light blue lines are the final cutter tool path of the 3D surface area bound with a yellow contour line



now I simply need $1000 so I can get a real license that will allow me to post code

all the best,

R

I'm auditioning yet another CAM package, and I believe this one is going to be the keeper. not only is it able to do all I've asked of it in the basic entry level package, but it's currently on sale for $600 (vs. the reg price of $995) I have a 30-day temp license that allows me to generate the tool paths and also post the gcode, so I should have an opportunity to cut pink foam test articles in the very near future. if these are good ... I get to cut wood!

here's an image of the roughing passes for the rear gut-cut



and then an image of the visual replay of the cutting code to verify that I've programmed to tool paths like I wanted. I've discovered this is a powerful tool for finding that you've cut the wrong part of the body and left behind the part you wanted to cut



all of these pale green lines are centerlines of the cutting tool paths for the body outline, the control cavity, the control cavity cover recessed face, the heel contour, and the gut-cut. total estimated cutting time is under an hour, and I need to perform one cutter change (flat bottom to rounded bit) mid-way thru the cutting of this side. we'll see how that compares with reality once my machine controller code accounts for the feedrate changes coming in/out of sharp corners



and just in case you wanted to see what I'm working with for a session display, here's my RhinoCAD session with the madCAM plug-in loaded and the rear side tool paths displayed



most of what I now know was learned purely by intuitive hacking - a reflective testament on how nice of a job the development team at Rhino and madCAM have done to make their tools powerful and user friendly. I would have loved to have done all this with the software I sell, but the company wasn't open to giving me an employee discount ... and I don't have a spare (undisclosed really big amount) sitting around looking for a place to be spent

all the best,

R