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u/blitzkriegtaco

r/ToyotaTacoma r/CasioQC r/CNC r/vintagecomputing r/mastercam r/casio r/diypedals r/AskMechanics r/Guitar
▲ 5 r/mastercam+1 crossposts

Looking for some Mastercam programming tips on a guitar neck

Hello fellow CNC folks. I've got a question for anyone that is willing to read and contribute. I've been programming for about 10 years now in Mastercam, and I've come across something that has me wishing for more options. That's where you guys come in - I may be missing something that is completely obvious. Pictured are 3 different toolpath options I have for a guitar neck. For context, I'm using a 1.5" ball endmill on a 3 head FAGOR router. I have seen people run guitar necks with parallel passes perpendicular to the neck, but that is not an option in this case. The goal is an efficient toolpath with minimal lifting, and a surface finish that requires light sanding. This is a production environment, so the lower the run time the better. Let me know what y'all think. Additional context in each photo

Edit: I forgot to mention that the first two phots are Raster paths.

This is two toolpaths - one for each half of the neck angled at 0.875 degrees to follow the taper of the sides. This gives the ideal surface finish but includes a lot of lifting in the center of the neck. Ideally there would be a toolpath that could achieve this result by selecting the full neck, adjusting the outside angle on both sides and stitch together the center without lifting. The last photo achieves this with a scallop path, but additional context there on why that path is not an option. The old school guys here would program half the neck, save the path as wireframe, mirror it and stitch the center together by hand. Ideally, I don't need to do that...

This is one toolpath with the whole neck selected running parallel to the center line of the neck. Since there is a taper on the sides, all of the lifting moves to the edges. This looks great toward the center of the neck but leaves less than desirable results on the sides that would require heavier sanding.

This scallop path is my ideal choice. One entry, no lifts and follows the taper on both sides. Unfortunately, the machine this is running on is a FAGOR router and is unable to achieve an ideal surface finish with this path. As the tool runs down the neck on one side and up the neck on the other, it leaves a hump right in the center where the two halves meet. There is about 0.002 if backlash in all axes on this machine that I have to navigate around, so this ideal scenario is not an option.

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u/blitzkriegtaco — 14 days ago
▲ 6 r/Guitar

Vega-Trem Review

Waddup gear nerds. I recently purchased and installed a Vega-Trem, and I left a pretty lengthy Amazon review that I thought I'd post here for anyone looking into getting one. Hope this helps inform any decisions or is just a fun read for some of ya.

So let me start this review by saying my install was a completely unique experience due to the guitar I chose to mount it on. This 1980s Epiphone S310 did not have the standard post spacing or bushing thread that a modern day American or over seas S-style guitar would have. The unique post spacing was a large part of what drove my decision to go with the Vega-Trem, and I was extremely happy to see that the slots in the base had enough range to accommodate what was already present on this guitar (52mm post spacing). Any other tremolo I'd have had to pull the bushings, fill the holes and re-drill/insert new bushings at the correct post width. Not the case with the Vega-Trem, so that was the first huge win! The next thing I ran into was the thread on the previously installed bushings did not match either of the included threaded adapters. Rather than pulling the bushings and inserting new ones with the correct thread, I decided to drill out the old thread and re-tap to 1/4-28 to accommodate the American adapters. Once this was done, mounting the baseplate was easy peasy! The next thing I ran into was the advertised "spring lock screws" being misaligned from the spring mounting holes on the rear block. The holes did not overlap, so tightening those screws provided no function at all and they just went all the way through the block. This did in fact change my install experience since the provided video from Vega-Trem relies on this feature to hold the springs in place during the tremolo install. I could see this being problematic for an inexperienced person, but thankfully this was not my first rodeo with a tremolo install. I was able to put the high and low e through the block and add some string tension and then insert and attach the springs to the claw afterward to keep them in place. A small annoyance, but this is what is dropping my review to 4 stars since it is in fact a QC issue and made the install more difficult than advertised. All of that being said, once the tremolo is properly set up, the springs stay in place just fine like any other tremolo block that does not have those locks.

Now, how does the unit perform once the setup is complete? In short: perfect. I love this tremolo. It is the smoothest trem I have used, and I love everything about it. It looks great, plays great and makes every other tremolo on my other guitars feel dated - even a Gotoh S-510. That brings me to price - it is definitely on the high side! I would say it is decent value for the money since the install is so simple and the tremolo functions beautifully, but the only thing stopping me from installing this on every S-style guitar I own is the price. Something to consider is that you're going to need either a locking nut or some locking tuners if the guitar you plan on installing this on does not already have them. That is an additional cost on top of the already pricey tremolo to get it to function to its fullest potential. With locking tuners and a well-made nut, this tremolo stays in tune perfectly while both diving down and pulling up. I can't speak to non-locking tuners but given my experience with other tremolos combined with them, I imagine tuning stability could be an issue with the Vega-Trem depending on how hard you use it.

Overall, this tremolo really is a fine piece of craftsmanship, and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a very nice upgrade to the standard S-style trem. I would encourage anyone looking to get one to refer to the print provided by Vega-Trem and ensure it will fit your guitar. Oh, and definitely measure the height of your current guitars trem block. Something I forgot to mention earlier is this guitar is about 1/4" thinner than a standard S-style guitar, so I had to 3D print a shim to ensure the block would not collide with the spring cavity back plate when pulling up on the trem. Thank you for coming to my Vega-Trem Ted Talk.

u/blitzkriegtaco — 3 months ago
▲ 2 r/vintagecomputing

Question about Gotek and Flash Floppy

Hey guys,

I have an old CNC machine that I'm wanting to install a Gotek in to replace the floppy drive. The machine is Windows 98 based. My use case would be having say a 16GB flash drive, and being able to just copy/paste text files to/from the flash drive to the machine. I'm not looking to run any IMG files on it. I've used the Gotek's built in formatting tool, but that only gives me a single 1.44mb partition that I can access on my main PC to put .txt files into. The machine will not just simply read the flash drive as a 16gb hard drive with .txt files on it, but if I format the flash drive to a 1.44mb floppy from Windows 98, it will then read it that way.

My question is this... is there a way to use this Gotek to enable the PC to read a flash drive of any size as a storage device with loose files and not look for an emulated floppy image/partition? I installed Flash Floppy onto the Gotek as I have seen that it makes it able to read IMG files that are loose in the flash drives root folder. My hope is it would do the same with loose files. Haven't installed back into the machine yet and seen how Flash Floppy works, but any thoughts, insight or advice is appreciated!

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u/blitzkriegtaco — 5 months ago
▲ 8 r/diypedals

Another “wtf am I doing wrong” post. 2nd pedal build… much smoother than the first. Effect signal is SUPER quiet

So I got this Centaur kit from Stewmac for my second build, and overall the build itself went smooth. I go to plug it in and get bypass signal, so that’s a great sign. But when I turn it on, the effect signal is SUPER quiet. It’s definitely there, but I am hearing my clean signal loud with the effect very distant and quiet in the background with knobs cranked. Any ideas what may be causing this? I re-flowed all joints and got the same result

u/blitzkriegtaco — 5 months ago
▲ 2 r/AskMechanics

DIY TPMS Sensors?

2013 Toyota Tacoma - 4.0 V6 - 220k
Question for you real mechanics. I’ve done a lot of DIY maintenance on my truck from oil, fluids, belts, shocks/struts, u-joints etc etc, but the one thing I haven’t messed with myself is tires. I got some new wheels that came off of a ‘24 4Runner, and ordered a TPMS reset tool to sync em up. 99% sure these ‘24 sensors just aren’t compatible with my ‘13’s ECU. My question is this - how big of a job is swapping TPMS sensors, and is it something a DIYer can do safely? Or is this a job for a tire shop?

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u/blitzkriegtaco — 5 months ago