Guitar design and manufacture using Fusion 360 and CNC

[jeff_strater]

Hi Fusion community, (and especially guitar makers),

I wanted to let you know that I’ve been working on a cool project with our friends at CNC Router Parts.  As I said way back in October, in this thread, I had started on this project to design and produce a guitar body with Nathan Skalsky, who is part owner of CNC Router Parts.  Rather than my usual modeling projects, which just resulted in a Fusion model, I wanted to approach this with the idea of actually producing a real, physical, playable guitar.  Since then, we’ve been busy in design and implementation.  Since we both have day jobs, it’s taken us a while, but we are finally at a point where we can declare the project done.

In my past guitar making, I’ve always only done completely flat-slab type designs, because it was relatively easy to cut out the shape on a bandsaw from a flat chunk of wood.  But, I’ve always wanted to do a carved top guitar.  I realized that the combination of 3D design in Fusion + CNC for manufacturing would give me a powerful way to explore this type of design.  We are also working on a hollow-body version, which we think will further illustrate the power of CNC + 3D modeling.

We learned a lot.  We made a lot of mistakes along the way:  Everything from mis-measurements of the neck and bridge positions and height to tool path errors to simple human mis-communication of who was making which changes in which order.  We made lots of test runs using cheap wood, each of which revealed things we hadn’t thought of (for instance, that the mounting screws for the bridge can’t go into the control cavity!).  However, we are very happy with the results.  The Fusion model, I think, came out pretty cleanly.  It is fully parametric, and can withstand customization of the outside shape, the carved top shape, etc., and updates without errors.

Here is the model in Fusion:

An early test run using glued-up cheap Home Depot pine:

After milling:

The finished body:

And all assembled:

Interested in learning more about our workflow, or want to make your own 3D sculpted guitar with Fusion 360?  

Download our Fusion 360 design file from our Thingiverse: 3D Sculpted Electric Guitar project page

Watch our "Design & Make" Videos Walk-throughs:

• Making a 3D Sculpted Guitar using the Benchtop PRO CNC Machine
• Customizing the 3D Sculpted Guitar Design in Fusion 360 
• Designing a 3D Sculpted Guitar using Fusion 360   
• Creating CNC G-Gode for the 3D Sculpted Guitar using Fusion 360 

I’m hoping to start a discussion here about guitar design and building using Fusion.  Feel free to ask any questions, make any comments, etc., and we’ll be happy to respond.

@jeff_strater & @nathan.skalsky

[Anonymous]

Hey Nicolai!

I don't think the model is accurate enough for a build as of yet, I've still to do a proper version with G code that would work
I allso noticed that some of the splines were off and thus making the whole thing off in proportions
Been a bit swamped with work lately so I haven't gotten 'round to make a new version =/

but hopefully I'll find some time in the days to come

With that said, I think you can find the 3d model if you do a search for PRS under Community/Gallery
or here: https://gallery.autodesk.com/fusion360/projects/92733/prs-type-guitar-body?searched=

Be warned! if you do download and open it...
...you'll see that it's a mess ,)

Cheers!
//Jens

[Anonymous]

I just bought a small CNC machine and have been learning Fusion for about a month - but have not moved from modeling to cam portion yet - going to watch your videos and see what can be gleaned.  Been building guitars since about 2005 so most of the figures are in my head - just need to learn to use fusion to get my needs to g-code!  Many thanks so much for sharing your knowledge and adventures.  Been a tad frustrated because I have a machine but my skills are still not up to what's in my head - people have suggested I use Aspire or Rhino as apparently they're easy to learn - but I've already invested the time in Fusion and plan to stay with it until my machine no longer gathers dust.

[Anonymous]

Watched your video - but it leaves out how the guy centered the guitar blueprint on the grid and how he used the callibration tool.  Everything in the video after that is unimportant without the first two things - centering and positioning.  How do you center the drawing on the grid?  After that I know how to use the Calibrate tool.

[Anonymous]

NEVERMIND - Figured it out myself - how do you delete posts?

[rpalf]

That is so much like what im trying at present, and yours looks brill. Can I ask did you use the Sculpt tools?

Ray

[Anonymous]

I'm only just learning to use the sculpting tools - have a lot to learn.

[Anonymous]

Made this guitar t-style guitar and pickguard with fusion and milled it (not the neck just the body).  The neck pocket is different from most t-style as my necks are a little wider.

[jeff_strater]

that is beautiful.  I love the finish.  Nice job!

[Anonymous]

Many thanks Jeff!  The top is curly cherry.

[etfrench]

That turned out very nice.

[Anonymous]

Thank you sir!

[nathan.skalsky]

Looks nice! Thanks for sharing it!

-Nathan

[Anonymous]

Thank you very much sir!

[oldtbone55]

That is a gorgeous finish! A real beauty!

[Anonymous]

Many thanks sir 🙂