Does anyone CNC a scroll?

[Andreas Preuss]

Just a question out of curiosity. 

If not, where is the major problem doing this with a CNC machine?

[Don Noon]

I know Molnar does, and I am working in that direction.

For me, the major difficulties are:

1. Making the model.  It's a very complicated form.
2. Fixturing and indexing to get all 4 sides to match up
3. Tools to hollow out the pegbox and mill into the throat of the scroll.  There are some long reaches with skinny tools, not the nicest thing.

I'm currently partway thru all of the items, and have not cut a single chip as yet. 

[Advocatus Diaboli]

I’ve cut out a couple one the 4th axis just to see how hard it would be, but I enjoy carving scrolls too much to be willing to give that up!

[Michael K.]

This CNC is not really Homade.

But how many Scrolls you carve by your own Hand till all is set-up perfectly to compare?

 

[Mark Norfleet]

Just like that Don! 

Some of the cutter choices were interesting, particularly the conical one.  I’d love to have the scroll in my hands to look at.  I heard a lot of what could be “chatter”, but perhaps the tools are sharp enough for there to not be much of an effect on the finished product.

[FiddleDoug]

3 hours ago, Michael K. said:

This CNC is not really Homade.

But how many Scrolls you carve by your own Hand till all is set-up perfectly to compare?

 

Pretty nice! Can you get those at Harbor Freight? Seriously, who has the money or room for something like that?

[scordatura]

https://youtu.be/uWCimeKzh1k

Personally, I like the fine work of scroll carving. The removal of large amounts of wood is a task that I am not that fond of. 

[Shunyata]

This is where the difference between artistic and pecuniary influences shows up.  I am an ameteur with an overly romantic view of violin making.  But even my shop has a bandsaw and a drill press.  

[Andreas Preuss]

13 hours ago, Michael K. said:

This CNC is not really Homade.

But how many Scrolls you carve by your own Hand till all is set-up perfectly to compare?

 

Thats pretty amazing.

No more questions.

[Shelbow]

I used to do a bit of CNC work on a 3 axis Haas machine a couple of years ago. mainly prototype models. The CAD models were always super fine in detail from the designer's and we had an ancient version of MasterCAM. It wasn't enjoyable. We had to use these ultra fine 1.5mm milling cutters ( I'm not sure why they made metric cutters) from this US custom tool maker to cut a lot of the radii and there were loads of bloody Fibonacci curves.

I hated it, I much prefer doing things by hand, but I respect the work needed to program something complex like a scroll.

[MANFIO]

My Hillbilly CNC carved this viola scroll in just three days! It takes ages to program... mainly to "teach" the machine to use scrapers that work better than those rotatory tools. It makes a mess, but my workshop is already very messy. 

 

[catnip]

This guy uses the "lock and key" method to carve a scroll (around ~15 min mark). 

 

[Marty Kasprzyk]

9 minutes ago, MANFIO said:

My Hillbilly CNC carved this viola scroll in just three days! It takes ages to program... mainly to "teach" the machine to use scrapers that work better than those rotatory tools. It makes a mess, but my workshop is already very messy. 

 

Beautifully perfect.  Can you introduce some random errors in the cnc so it looks like it was carved by a human being?

"The secret of success is sincerity.  Once you can fake that you've got it made."

[arglebargle]

1 hour ago, MANFIO said:

My Hillbilly CNC carved this viola scroll in just three days! It takes ages to program... mainly to "teach" the machine to use scrapers that work better than those rotatory tools. It makes a mess, but my workshop is already very messy. 

 

 

Three days. How long does it take you to carve a scroll by hand? Assuming a regular working day, do you save any time?

 

[Bodacious Cowboy]

Making a scroll by CNC is about as appealing to me as a date with an inflatable doll.

[HoGo]

I guess Manfios "Hilbilly CNC" might be called apprentice in other parts of world :-)

[Michael_Molnar]

I use a CNC to rough them out, leaving room for artistic finessing.  It is fun cleaning up and adding the details. 
 

Drawing a scroll in 3D is not easy.

[Andreas Preuss]

Reading comments here, I would suggest to use the CNC as a roughing out device and not to get the scroll completeley finished. If I would imagiine to work from precise sawcuts (made in this case by the CNC machine) which are on both sides exactly the same, the finish shouldn't take much more time than giving a CNC scroll the final touch.

[Marty Kasprzyk]

What were the failings of the old technology 3d router duplicators?

[Advocatus Diaboli]

6 hours ago, Marty Kasprzyk said:

What were the failings of the old technology 3d router duplicators?

They required a few more calories to operate. 

[BarryD]

On 2/26/2021 at 6:33 PM, Michael_Molnar said:

I use a CNC to rough them out, leaving room for artistic finessing.  It is fun cleaning up and adding the details. 
 

Drawing a scroll in 3D is not easy.

Michael this is exactly my approach. Let the CNC hog off everything and I can still hand finish and tune. Do you know of anyone who has the neck/scroll g-code that would sell the file?

[Advocatus Diaboli]

2 hours ago, BarryD said:

Michael this is exactly my approach. Let the CNC hog off everything and I can still hand finish and tune. Do you know of anyone who has the neck/scroll g-code that would sell the file?

It’s probably easiest to work from a Ct or laser scan.  

[Don Noon]

I attempted for a while to model a 3D scroll, and gave up.  However, I still used the CNC to do a few tasks that seemed appropriate.

I hated cleaning up the bandsawed outline, and the CNC cuts much nicer, leaving less to clean up.  Some wood is hogged off 2D, leaving a good bit to take off by bandsaw and hand, but that goes quickly.  An engraving bit cuts the 2D scroll pattern, which is easier to follow than the pin punch method.  And pegholes.  I still need to use a fishtail pattern to complete the job.

The idea is to still have it hand-carved, but with a smooth pattern to start with.

[Dale Vanderlaan]

I CNC cello scrolls.  I designed the scroll and neck in AutoCAD as solids that were pieced together.  The first two I did in left and right halves so that I could also cut out the pegbox with my machine.  The first attempt used a cheap cherry slab instead of curly maple because I was not sure I could do it.  Gluing 2 halves together also strengthens the neck from any unforeseen grain weaknesses.  These pictures show the pieces with no hand clean-up yet.

Now after gluing together and hand finishing the flutes and scroll:

Here’s Claro Walnut epoxied together:

The latest scroll I tried as a one piece curly maple on the CNC and that leaves the whole peg box to hollow out with elbows subject to tendinitis as I don’t have a multi-axis machine like the one in the video.

Dale

[JacksonMaberry]

I'll admit this is all pretty neat. I have occasionally not wanted to carve scrolls, but in those cases I just get someone else to carve them for me in exchange for something they want.