We think our first guitar body builds turned out really well. We made some improvements to our workflow on the second that really helped. Starting to get the hang of creating toolpaths in Fusion 360 but still a ton to learn.
Looks great.
Did you do the fret board as well?
Thanks Paul!
We’ve not attempted a neck yet. That will have to be next. That was a Warmoth neck I’ve had in the closet for about 20 years:)
Have you milled a neck and fingerboard?
Yes. I bought my original cnc machine to do just that. For reasons I never figured out the frets were very hard to fit in the slots I cut. If I were to do it again I would do a lot of testing on slot width.
Having the compound radius on the fretboard was a big win. The custom inlays a very big win. I suspect I got some intangible benefit from getting the frets precisely where they were supposed to be.
I did the fretboard in ebony and it came of the machine with a polished finish already, though that is probably because I had time and set the step over way too small.
To hold the fretboard I wound up cutting a pocket the size of the fretboard and using double sided tape to hold it in there. I had a few holes in the pocket that I could use to poke the fretboard off when it was done.
Very cool Paul. I may have some questions when we give it a try! I haven’t generated any 3d toolpaths yet. Did you cut the fret slots along the fretboard radius? I was watching a video on Stemac but he was using vCarve and just cut slots at a constant depth. I’ve never installed or changed frets. I’m sure I’d need to make a junk fingerboard or two to practice on.
Did you use a 1/4 bull nose to contour the ebony fretboard?
It was a long time ago that I machined the fretboard and one of the first projects that I did on the machine. I would guess that I used a 1/32 tapered ball nose because that is the tool that I had.
Yes I cut the fret slots along the radius. I didn’t have much choice as the depth of those bits really wouldn’t work otherwise.
I used solid works to model the fretboard. I remember a fair amount of math to calculate the slot location. I remember having the axis of the cone that makes the fretboard. From there I made rings of the right diameter to cut the fret slots to the correct depth. I don’t know if I would do it that way in fusion 360. There is probably some way to cut down an equal distance from the surface of the fretboard.
I made lots of junk fretboards 
, but that was because I had to machine the back as well to make space for electronics to drive some leds in the fretboard. The actual shape is simple once you have the model.
Can’t remember if I’ve shown you my sites before:
I have some videos showing fixtures for neck and fretboard work .I have video of how I cut an entire (acoustic) neck but have never got around to editing it together.
Thanks for sharing. Beautiful guitars! I watched your neck vacuum fixture build and will check out your other videos.
Tackling an acoustic guitar still seems extremely challenging to me. Maybe I will get there someday. I am going to build a neck fixture and attempt a neck soon.
Joel