Making a Guitar Stand with a CNC Machine

This project is great for people who already have some experience with CNC milling.

The stand consists of 2 identical legs, each made up of 3 parts: Long Vertical - Short Vertical & Horizontal;

If you are familiar with Fusion, you can also create a new Gcode from the CAD body to make the legs in a 1 contour operation. For example, you could use plywood to make the stand from two 1-piece legs, which would be much faster and reduce the cost of the stand. 

Each leg consists of 3 pieces and thus 3 G-codes;

• Long vertical part requires a 40 x 378 x 20 mm stock
• Short vertical part requires a 168 x 46 x 20 mm stock
• Horizontal needs a 289 x 61 x 20 mm stock.
  
  

We used beech wood for our stand, but you can use any material you like for this project. 

Tips 

1) Oversize your stock (+20mm on each side) to properly secure it to the spoiler board. Securing it firmly to your spoiler board will not only prevent your piece from flying around, but will also reduce the amount of vibration during milling and thus improve the surface finish.

Check out our "Feeds and Speeds Explained" article to learn more about the influence of parameters on your milling results.

2) If, like us, you are using solid wood, you need to pay attention to the direction of the grain! Your grain should be parallel to the long edge of each piece you mill. Orienting your grain the other way would break the structural integrity of the fence and it would break quickly when you use it.

Good grain direction	Bad grain direction

We used a 6mm 3-flute flat end mill for this project. You can buy one directly from our webshop.

You can also edit the Autodesk Fusion 360 project to use a different end mill if you want.

Each leg consists of 3 pieces, so 3 G-code files are needed for each leg.

Long vertical part

This part consists of 2 operations:

• Drilling the holes for the rope that will hold the two legs together and the dog bones. The spindle should be set to run between 20,000 and 25,000 rpm, as the plunge feed rate is 1,000 mm/min. We use a 3 mm plunge to allow for proper chip evacuation.
• A 2D contour will leave 0.3 mm of axial stock, while a "-0.1 mm" radial stock will create enough clearance to fit the part in "horizontally". The spindle should be running between 20,000 and 25,000 rpm, as the feed rate is 2,000 mm/min  with 3 mm passes.
  
  

Short vertical part

This part consists of 2 operations: .

• Drilling the holes for the dog bones. The spindle should be set to run between 20,000 and 25,000 rpm, as the plunge feed rate is 1,000 mm/min. We use a 3 mm plunge to allow for proper chip evacuation. 
• A 2D contour will leave a 0.3mm axial stock, while a "-0.2mm" radial stock will create enough clearance to fit the part in "horizontally". The spindle should run between 20,000 and 25,000 rpm, as the feed rate is 2,000 mm/min  with 3 mm passes.
  
  .

Horizontal

This part consists of 2 operations: .

• Drilling the holes for the dog bones. The spindle should be set to run between 20,000 and 25,000 rpm as the plunge feed rate is 1,000 mm/min. We use a 3 mm plunge to allow chips to be properly evacuated. 
• A 2D contour leaves an axial stock of 0.3 mm. The spindle should be running between 20,000 and 25,000 rpm because the feed rate is 2,000 mm/min with 1.5 mm passes.

• Download Autodesk Fusion 360 and G-Code files here