Hello,
My name is Bill Moll and I've been building guitars professionally for almost 45 years however, not using CNC, as many of my contemporaries do. I'm also a half-a$$ed hobby machinist and gunsmith which gives me a change of pace once in a while, but I enjoy doing that the old fashion way as well - at the lathe and mill. I've never had anything "against" using NC for either endeavor - except for the costs, and the learning curve. :-)
Well, one of my gunsmithing projects has now turned into a product. Tolerances must be very, very tight however, so I have contracted with an outside CNC shop to produce some of the parts for me. I will engrave my own logo, model, and serial numbers though, and have bought a copy of Mach3 to see if I can get my stodgy old brain around all of this. The "tutorials" that came with my software - "getting started easy with Mach3", had nothing to do with learning how to use the program, only getting your steppers, ports, and boards configured correctly. (help)
I understand that "Lazy-cam" will convert a .dxf file into G code but, all I have the ability to produce are .jpg's, .tiff's, .bmp's, etc. I've committed myself to learning this stuff thoroughly as time allows, but I need to get up to speed on the "simple" engraving work as soon as I can. Any, and all, help will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for being here - I now plan to do a lot of reading!
Bill