The Padauk Fender: 3 2 1 Let's CAM

A few weeks ago I taught a class on building your own electric guitar.  Or, rather, it wasn't really building - we were mostly assembling, as I didn't have the resources or time for the class to even paint their own guitar bodies, let alone mill them.  Regardless, the class went great and I'm pretty sure I was the one that learned more than anybody else - intonation and getting a guitar completely set up is a really interesting process.

A few people were still interested in the whole start to finish process, and I was also doing some Fusion 360 CAM work in a different class to learn about chipload, tools, different types of machining passes, and just what goes in to making something on a CNC milling machine.  Eventually I put two and two together - what if I milled my own guitar body?

The guitar class had required me to do a lot of research on tonewoods, and I had come across some neat things and some really beautiful instruments that people had made.  A lot of what I liked were made with a solid body of one type of wood with another piece laminated to the top, which isn't something I wanted to do for my first guitar body project.  There were a few guitars I saw that were solidly made of a gorgeous dark orange wood, and they kept popping up when I was looking around at options.  It's called padauk, and the photos just don't capture that rich orange color.

Also, turns out you can get padauk guitar body blanks, which means the stock is cut to size and doesn't require you to remove any material from the top.  Awesome.

Yep it's wood

Keeping with the theme of not going too crazy with this project, I also wanted to use an existing design, and be able to just buy existing parts for it.  I was going to try to make a bass, but ultimately this is also about guitars, so I settled on the class Fender Stratocaster and used this great model as my starting point.  That meant I knew the blank would be the right size, and I would be able to build it with basic components.

I received a gorgeous padauk blank, and modified the existing model only slightly to fit an Arduino or Raspberry Pi in the back for some audio processing experiments.  Or just LEDs, whatever I eventually have time for.  Then it was time to figure out CAM.  

Oh man I hope I don't mess this up

I'm still learning a lot of Fusion 360, and I am still trying to wrap my head around different types of machining.  Turns out, there are a LOT of ways to machine something.  For this project, when I started out, my machining time was 7 hours...per side.  That wouldn't fly, so with some help and ingenuity from my friend and CNC instructor, we got it down to about 1.5 hours per side.  That's much better, and doesn't require quite as much babysitting.  I also had to account for the fact this was a two sided job, so we will have to flip everything over and make sure it lines up.  We'll do this with dowels, and then drill the placement into the spoilboard to lock everything in place.

Once the toolpaths were generated and the gcode was checked, it was time to begin.  Each side required a few passes to get the job done.  The first pass is the main pocket pass, which cuts the initial pockets out of the stock.  This is done with a flat tool, and in this case one meant for hardwood.  

It looks like a guitar

There were definitely some stressful moments, as some of those pockets are deep, and the dust collection was barely touching the stock surface.  But the little shapeoko powered through, and nothing went crazy wrong aside from the dust collection not being super great because of the tool length.

The second pass is a finishing pass, done to make things looks really smooth and polished.  This is done with a ball end mill, and is actually much faster because we're not removing much material.

It looks like a guitar!!

The first side was...a success!  I'll have a bit of sanding to do to finish it, but it actually looks like a Strat.  How cool is that?

I'm about to head out to do the other side, which can make or break this project.  Hopefully I'll have good news at the end of the day!