Brian May Red Special Replica Build Parts 3-4: Body Section Test Cuts

On 3rd February 2017 I test cut a lower guitar body section from the rough quality blockboard which took about 1h 45m in total. The embedded video below contains an hour’s worth of repetitive footage of milling of the lower body section at normal speed. this is plenty to give you a flavour of how it all works. [I didn’t speed up any of the early videos before uploading to YouTube]. It shows the roughing passes then the toolpath moves to finishing passes which you don’t see. The parallel finishing passes move across the X axis taking off the bottom of the pockets; the waterline finishing passes move around the outlines taking off 1.00 mm per pass and the pencil cleanup toolpath moves around the outline and takes off a little bit.

XY feed rate: 2,000 mm/min, Z plunge rate: 120 mm/min, spindle speed: 20,000 rpm. Depth removed per pass: 2.00 mm on the roughing passes, 1.00 mm on the finishing pass.

On 6th February 2017 I test cut the upper guitar body section from the rough quality blockboard which took 1 hour 50 minutes (9m 20s for the upper face and 1h 40m for the lower face). I increased the XY feed rate from 2,000 mm/min to 2,500 mm/min for later cuts once I was satisfied with the machine performance and reliability.

XY feed rate: 2,000 mm/min, Z plunge rate: 120 mm/min, spindle speed: 20,000 rpm. Depth removed per pass: 2.00 mm on the roughing passes, 1.00 mm on the finishing pass.

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Parts 5-7: Upper Oak Insert
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Parts 1-2: Timber Preparation