Guitar Headstock - Need help with toolpath strategies.

[Anonymous]

I have a guitar headstock to mill out and I'm having a heck of a time trying to figure out what the best strategies are. The tool paths I've created are letting me down. Hope someone out there has some ideas. 

Here's a path to the headstock design...https://a360.co/30uUVUo

There are two particular things stumping me. 

1) How do I create a cutout using tabs in one operation by milling from the top, and milling through at least to the bottom of the model? I can't seem to get a toolpath to work...and I've tried several. My guess is that I'm not selecting the geometries properly (?) The paths seem to carve all the way through the body toward the truss rod slot.

2)...and that brings  me to the truss rod slot....It's a sloped geometry, and I've had a lot of failure just trying to mill out that truss rod slot where it exists the neck. I'm hoping someone out there can humble me on what I'm doing wrong while toolpathing this dang truss rod slot. 

My "thank-yous" in advance. Even just some ideas are great learning points, even if they don't remedy my problems. I'm only slightly beyond being a beginner with generating toolpaths in the Manufacturing tab. (I'm using a Shapeoko 3XL, if it is helpful) 

Thank you in advance, 

Harold Stevens

[email protected]

[seth.madore · Accepted solution]

I'm sorry for the delay in response. I'm looking at your file now, and I've got a one preliminary question for you:

1) What Setup am I looking at? I'm guessing the "HeadStock Front" is the one I'm going to look at, but I could be wrong...

[Anonymous]

I saw that you said you were just beyond a beginner, so I do understand frustration when it comes to programming. I was wondering is Featurecam your first cadcam programming software, and have you ever used Fusion 360. I have been using Fusion for over a year and have done a fair amount of 3D programming in Fusion. I am a little bit of a guitar person myself. I love old vintage guitars and I am also a little bit interested in design as well, Would love to see what your into.. Who knows, maybe I could help and will if I can. Good luck on your project.

[Anonymous]

Hi Seth. No worries. I was able to figure out a workaround. It seems there was something strange going on, beyond my understanding. Here is a new link: https://a360.co/2HBiYK4 

The THS_Headstock component under Component1:1 is the thing of interest. I was able to create the toolpaths in this version without any problems. 

My guess is that either my previous project got corrupted or lost its ability to reference the "Model" in the Setups.  So, I exported the components, started a new project and imported them. The same toolpath strategies then worked fine in the new project. 

Thank you for replying Seth. 👍 

-Harold

[Anonymous]

Thank you Mark.

Yes - I've been using Fusion360 for the last 6 months heavily almost every night. It is a wonderful tool. I haven't tried FeatureCam. The toolpath namings and geometry selections in Fusion can be somewhat unintuitive as well as the variable settings, which often lead me to error messages that don't really give hints as to what actually caused a toolpath to fail. So, I've been digging in and figuring it out the hard way. Online resources don't really scratch the surface of some of these tricky problems...yet. I'm sure the information will grow, because Fusion360 is really awesome. 

Perhaps my first mistake was thinking that I'd start with something "easy" like an electric guitar. I had no clue at the time how dependant the CNC hardware is on the toolpaths, and how dependant the toolpaths are on the CNC hardware. ..and then add in the need for accuracy. Yep - that's reads in a circle. The Tool Library is a god send for corralling many pesky problems, but the toolpath menus are really running mostly open loop, allowing entry errors in some cases that are only caught during generation. I'm sure that will improve in time. 

If you get stuck on any tool paths or need any CNC advice, I'm happy to share what I know. Maybe guitars are fun to create because they are so challenging to get right.  

-Harold