CNC or Not?

**truckjohn** · 13th January 2012, 01:39 AM

My own feeling of it basically mirror's Bob Taylor's point....

If you can build certain components both better quality and faster with CNC - why shouldn't you do it? No one gripes about the 10 million jigs and fixtures that the average Luthier ends up building or buying....

Take a fretboard for instance... You can put the fret slots *EXACTLY* where they are supposed to be - and easily be better than 0.1mm accuracy... and probably in 1/3 the time to do it on a table saw with an accuracy of probably worse than 0.4mm..... What's the downside? You give the player an instrument that plays better in tune.......

Inlay is another perfect choice... You can do all sorts of fiddly line to line inlay... Cut out all the bits - and they drop right in perfect and in about 1/10th the time to cut it by hand! What's the downside - especially for common patterns.. other than telling someone you did it on CNC rather than by hand? I understand a 1-off custom pattern is a different story.. but still....

What about roughing out the necks - then let the Luthier final fit the neck to the player's hand....

In my mind, that sort of thing doesn't compromise the heart and soul of the guitar.... It doesn't make a Luthier into a soulless automaton - whose job is to minimize glue lines while assembling robot cut parts... All it does is to free up the Luthier's creativity to make the guitar the best it can be....

Thanks

**dlannetts** · 13th January 2012, 08:28 AM

Thanks John, as you said it would do fretboard and inlays, but i still have to pay to have the machine, run the machine, and take time to program it, on second year apprentice wages this CANT be done, i still don't have my own thicknesser, but none of this has stopped me doing what i really love, it's just taking me a lot more time and a lot of favors for other people so i can use there machinery. Yes, it would help me and would make guitars more accurately than i ever could, but No, i cant justify having one at this point in time.

David...

**Jeff Mills** · 19th January 2012, 04:31 PM

Originally Posted by dlannetts

Thanks John, as you said it would do fretboard and inlays, but i still have to pay to have the machine, run the machine, and take time to program it, on second year apprentice wages this CANT be done, i still don't have my own thicknesser, but none of this has stopped me doing what i really love, it's just taking me a lot more time and a lot of favors for other people so i can use there machinery. Yes, it would help me and would make guitars more accurately than i ever could, but No, i cant justify having one at this point in time.

David...

Dang it and I was cheering for you too

**dlannetts** · 19th January 2012, 06:48 PM

Thanks Jeff, its nice to know the supports there

**simso** · 20th January 2012, 10:51 PM

Learn how to do it by hand first, if you want to go cnc, then find someone local and see if you can buy some run time on there machines.

Here in perth I hire time out on our cnc machine, but its more carpenters etc that book it.

Dont expect to be able to run the machine either, you will have to draw the g-code up off site then get them to run the program. Cutters are expensive.

Bandsaws, thicknessers hand tools are far more important at the early stage of the game than high end machines.

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