I am a guitar builder looking to begin manufacturing my guitars with a CNC. I have been using Vetric V-carve, but have maxed out its capabilities. I have Rhino 7 and have spent some time figuring it out a bit, but I just don’t have the time to dive in and would rather hire someone to design the guitar and guitar neck for me. I have 2D images of my guitar and neck design, but need someone to create 3D images, especially focused on the contours. Please let me know if you have experience with Rhino and would be interested in taking on the project.
I assume you are fairly new to Rhino and maybe even to V-carve. The setup you have is similar to mine and I have made more 3d parts than 2d. When you say you maxed out V-carve do you mean you’ve gone as far as you can with 2d and 2.5d, but haven’t done any 3d parts?
Rhino is excellent for doing 3d parts like guitars, in fact there are several guitar makers who are regulars on this forum.
The basic process, as you may already know, is to save your 3d Rhino model as a Rhino 5 .3dm file. This can then be read by V-Carve where you can set up the toolpaths and preview them in 3d similar to the perspective view in Rhino.
May I suggest that since you have a specific project that you just plunge in with Rhino and whenever you run into an area where you can’t discover what to do next just post your file and maybe some screenshots with a description of your issue. I’m certain you’ll get the help you need.
The advantage is that when you get your first guitar done you’ll know exactly how to do the second yourself.
I understand there’s also some pretty good guitar modeling videos on youtube.
Vcarve is not so precise because the software converts 3D objects into heightmaps which then get used to generated toolpaths. Meaning the size of your pixel determines how precise your 3D milling will be and Vcarve has a limit for the amount of these pixels. So your milling job can be precise up to 0.5 mm, everything better than that is luck
This is what the edge of a sphere looks like in vcarve:
Are you actually using Vcarve? While it isn’t designed for machining optical parts or semiconductor stepping components it has a choice of 3 resolutions, each doubling the courser one. I routinely make parts accurate to .001" using the highest resolution. At the higher selections the program warns that the tool path calculation time is 3X or 7X longer, but with today’s computers it’s not an issue. I don’t think I’ve ever had a toolpath take more than a minute or two to calculate.
Yes, I’m fairly new to Rhino. I’ve been using Vcarve for a bit now and I find it really easy to use. Rhino is definitely more powerful and a steeper learning curve.
I’ve been making guitar bodies and necks using Vcarve and 2.5d has been working just fine. However, I’m unable to create the contours I want, especially on the neck using Vcarve so I just end up doing it by hand, which has been fine. I’d like to use my CNC to do that though.
I’ve watched a number of youtube videos and I’ve made some progress, but I’m daunted by the process and feel somewhat stuck. To be honest, I’d rather be building guitars than learning Rhino (it’s just not my thing); that’s why I’m looking to contract someone to do it for me. It’s an investment in my small guitar company.
I’m aware of those 3 resolution options. In fact, there’s even 2 extra options hidden when you press Shift while going into job setup. I always go for maximum.
Nonetheless, the amount of pixels stays the same regardless of the size of object you are making. So maybe for small objects this might not cause problems. When you create a contour out of your 3D object inside Vcarve it also doesn’t match the shape of those pixels so well, neither does it match the original size of the object. That’s why they also recommend importing a separate dxf for cutting out your shape, but there’s no way to position that precisely according to the generated 3D model. This might also be the issue which @kirkj is struggling with.
The 0.5 mm precision I mentioned was a statement from the people of Vcarve, by the way. They told me their pixel based approach typically creates models that differ around that amount from the original, after I was in touch with them trying to figure out where the errors I’m getting are coming from.
That being said, I do think Vcarve is a great software and easy to use, mainly for 2D milling. The 3D milling part could use quite some improvements and I mainly use it for aesthetic parts, not for parts that need to be accurate. Interesting though that it seems to work so well for you though, what kind of parts do you usually make with them?
Thanks for reminding me about the hidden extra resolutions. I had forgotten about them.
The parts I’ve made where I was concerned about “high” precision were about 3 or 4 inches in their largest dimension. I went back and read the Vcarve manual writeup on Model Precision and I can see that my experience was due to the small model size. I also noticed it didn’t mention the extra high resolutions available with the shift key, so I also don’t remember where I first heard about them. Maybe something on their forum.
In your communication with them did you find out whether the count they display for each resolution choice is pixels (two dimensional over X and Y) or voxels (3 dimensions spread over X, Y, and Z) of the material size for a 3d model?
This is probably getting off topic for @kirkj, but might interest him nevertheless. I suspect that for guitars accuracy to about 0.010" - 0.020" would be sufficient and any contours on the top and bottom surfaces would be cut with a ball nose cutter that would leave ridges requiring sanding for a smooth surface. Choosing the stepover for the cutter is a bit of an art to get the surface finish/machining time tradeoff optimized. A really handy feature of Vcarve is the two-sided machining capability, but it does require thought and care to precisely locate the material for the second side to match the location of the first when it is flipped.
I certainly agree that:
although I would leave out the word “quite”. I have had pretty good results with 3D as it is.
Vcarve has some pretty good videos on issues and techniques for 3D milling.
