![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.advancedrobotic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/Neck-Design.jpg?ssl=1\" "\\"Neck")
<\/a>Neck Design<\/p><\/div>\n
The easiest way to describe the process taken to draw the neck, and any other 3D object, is to imagine a simple 3 view drawing. Each view is placed on top of each other, aligned, then the required profiles are lofted, stretched, swept, and extruded to create the basic shapes. Once the main shapes are in place, you then blend or join the shapes to create the one integral piece. This sounds simple but it takes quite a bit of time to get everything looking perfect. There are many ways to create the one shape so take your time and play around with the different effects you can achieve.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Neck design rendered<\/p><\/div>\n
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<\/a>Neck transition<\/p><\/div>\n
The next step was to draw the truss rod cavity, tuning peg holes, fret and fret marker locations. Once all neck components were drawn, I could then align the neck to the body and check all final measurements.<\/p>\n
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Machining\u2026<\/p>\n
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First off I set out all the different pieces of material along with the truss rod and tuning pegs.<\/p>\n
Being an organic material, doing a visual inspection of the raw timber is essential to avoid any grain imperfections, cracks or splits. It\u2019s also a good idea to have all components on hand to check tolerances before the job comes off the machine. As mentioned previously, timber can react differently depending on a lot of outside influences like temperature and humidity etc\u2026<\/p>\n
A clear advantage of using the ART Profileshop software is that no matter where you place the material on the bed of the machine, you can \u201calign\u201d the job to the material. This comes in very handy when aligning parts to grain or joins and when you need to avoid imperfections in the material. I have also used the \u201cdigitizing\u201d feature to trace grain patterns and knots, then import the drawing back to my modeling software so I can see beforehand how the finished product will look.<\/p>\n
Having all tools laid out and inspected beforehand is also a good idea. The last thing you want is to be looking for tools half way through a job or having to re-toolpath the job. Basically, forethought is very important to achieve a smooth machining process.<\/p>\n
For any 3D machining work I use RhinoCam which is a module of RhinoCad. The two programs work along with each other and make for a very quick and easy to follow package.<\/p>\n
I separate the parts and toolpath each piece individually. When machining profiles, I use whats termed an \u201cEndmill\u201d or \u201cRouter bit\u201d. For timber there are even more options as referred to in the first article. Normally a traditional straight flute cutter does a great job on timber. For timber with loose grain I tend to lean towards a downward spiral cutter to minimize grain tear. For harder timbers like Maple and Ebony I prefer what is termed a chipper or roughing cutter. This has serrated flutes that break the material being removed into smaller pieces that clear easily. They tend to cut with less vibration and heat as well.<\/p>\n
For machining 3D parts, there are a multitude of options. In this case, machining the neck, I first drill the mounting points and locating dowels as per the body. Then once held in position, I\u00a0 machined the truss rod channel in the front of the neck.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Truss rod channel<\/p><\/div>\n
After this was checked for fit, I flipped the material over on the locating dowels and machined the tuning peg holes and Neck mounting holes using a 3mm Endmill. I then moved onto the roughing process using a 10mm Chipper to remove the majority of waste material around the part. You can determine how much material is left around the final shape in the toolpathing software. You can start to see the part really taking shape now.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Neck rear roughed<\/p><\/div>\n
After the roughing is finished, I used a 10mm Ball nose cutter to do the final surfacing of the neck. In 3D machining, a Round nose or Ball nose cutter is used so that all surfaces can be machined smooth. This is achieved by running back and forth over the surface of the part with a very small overlap and by using Round ended cutter, you can reach all surfaces within a 180Deg. angle. If you can imagine a beach ball rolling over the surface of sand dunes, as the surface changes, the beach ball can make contact with the surface of the dunes until it reaches a vertical wall. Now back to reality, the same process is applied to toolpathing in 3D.\u00a0 Your toolpathing software takes into account the radius of the end of the tool. As the tool travels along the surface of the part, the software will offset the path according to where the end of the tool is making contact with the part. Depending on the settings in your software, this can leave you with a surface that is all but ready for fine sanding.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Neck rear smoothed<\/p><\/div>\n
Next up is the Fret Board. I settled on traditional dot markers but instead of using plastic or clay, went for mother of pearl to add a touch of class. Of course any design you could imagine could be utilized given the abilities of our machines but I wanted the finished design to reflect a refined approach. At least this time round anyway\u2026.<\/p>\n
The Fret Board itself is made from Ebony which is very dense. Because of the tendency to chip and fracture, I used a cutter that was designed for composite materials like carbon fibre. This tool doesn\u2019t have a flute as such but has a series of cutting edges and more resembles a Burr as used in a Die Grinder. Each cutting edge is very small and resists pulling too much material away at any one time. The results turned out perfectly.<\/p>\n