When digifabbing rocks your socks off
Paul Rhoney has been building custom guitars for a while, and as a professional guitar maker, he prides himself on crafting top quality instruments. Guitar building is a very hands-on practice, but even here there is an opportunity to digitise some of the fabrication process. In Paul’s case, laser cutting has enabled him to create precise, durable routing templates for various guitar components.
The transition from hand cutting to laser-cutting with his Personal Factory required little effort.
Being a graphic designer, Paul started off designing his guitars on computer and creating full scale digital drawings, so he already had the cutting files. All that was required was waiting for the perfectly accurate cut-outs to turn up on his door step.
Up to that point, making the templates was a laborious task. Paul would print out the full scaled drawings in reverse, tape them face down on the plywood, transfer them onto the material with a toner transfer pen, cut out the outline and sand the edge by hand. This method would take days, and frustratingly, the result was never 100% true to the original drawings.
After working like this for a while, Paul decided to look for a more precise and less labour-intensive way of creating the templates, and started searching online for the nearest CNC service. Then someone suggested laser cutting as a more suitable fabrication method and directed Paul to Ponoko Personal Factory.
Paul describes this discovery as “a dream come true” for him.
Most of the routing templates are made from 0.25”/6.4mm MDF. Turns out there was an unforeseen advantage to using laser cutting: the burnt edges are denser and more durable than a sawn surface, and there is no need to soak the laser cut edges in super glue for strengthening.
His laser-cut templates are ready to use and cheap to make, so the cost saving is evident. Clear acrylic is another of Paul’s favourite materials and is used for the custom fret slotting templates. Aside from templates, there are the very popular custom switch plates and other guitar parts made from stainless steel, which get thoroughly buffed pre-assembly.
More from Paul after the jump:
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Posted in Functional Art + Objects, Laser Cutting, Maker Stories, Yana Skaler by yana | Comments are off for this post
Make your own stuff using: Laser Cutting
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