Working up toolpaths for a guitar body from an STL or DXF

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

as requested on support…

Given a guitar body design as an STL:

and a DXF:

We import each:

and look into how the imported geometry and 3D model work out for making toolpaths.

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

The DXF is cleaned up, and vectors closed and redundant open vectors separated/deleted:

exported as an SVG, and then imported into the .c2d file with the 3D model:

So we check the relative sizes and resize:

For each pocket, we draw in some geometry:

and use it to check the thickness:

and set matching toolpath depths:

Note that we are just setting up depths, and not considering matters such as cutting flute length:

It will be necessary to verify these and if need be, to source tooling suited to cutting at the specified depths.

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

Similarly, for cutting out the body, one will either need to source a tool able to make a 1.75" deep cut, or do this as a flip job and cut halfway, or finish on a router table or something:

Assuming one can find an 0.25" endmill able to do this, offset the outer geometry by that dimension plus 10%:

Apply:

Next, it will be necessary to cut the neck pocket out from the body of the guitar (maybe we should have kept some of that open geometry) — since the nodes of the geometry should be set up to allow this construction, we select both:

copy-paste them:

Go into Node Edit Mode:

and cut the two vectors open:

and delete nodes until we are down to just what is needed:

Then, draw in the missing line segments:

Select everything:

Join Vectors:

Yes

Drag everything into alignment:

Edit the pocket toolpath for the neck:

selecting this new geometry and the offset:

Changing the vectors so that the file now previews as:

Then select the outer and offset geometry and do toolpaths down to tab height starting at the bottom of that pocket:

Then do a contour toolpath starting at the bottom of that pocket with tabs:

which previews as:

A final refinement would be to offset the outline geometry by the radius of the tip of a roundover tool and cut that geometry to a suitable depth to get the rounding, or one could do that on a router table, or with a suitable handtool. For the roundover tool, see:

Using unsupported tooling in Carbide Create: Roundover / Cove / Radius bits

These are usually used in routers for decorative effects in wood: https://www.whitesiderouterbits.com/products/1570 but they are potentially useful for joinery: They are also useful for rounding off parts to allow rotary motion as for a hinged lid. Unfortunately, Carbide Create does not support this endmill geometry — but using the new support for previewing a V endmill when used in a No Offset Contour toolpath, it should be possible to preview them w/ confidence by stacking a series o…