The project to create was a lot more work than I had anticipated it to be going into it, but the end result was better than I thought it would be, despite sounding like a dying cat when played. I have never seen a violin close up, only on stage. In fact my initial plan was to create a cello, but because of the size, I deemed this too difficult. I figured a violin was pretty much just a tiny cello and I could teach myself to play once it was done.
The first piece I designed was the main body. To do this I traced a sketch of a violin in Fusion and scaled it to the right size. Because I did it like this, the body isn't perfectly curved, but it is rather close. I extruded the design to 2" (I changed this a few times and settled on 1.4" to account for the depth of the router bit) and used the shell function in Fusion to hollow it out. I had to stack several sheets of 3/4" plywood and glue them together to get this height. I routed it out with a 1/4 flat bit on the X-Carve, which took a few hours. If I were to redo this step I would probably rework my design to be smoother and also use one piece of solid material instead of the plywood. I think that this was one of my most successful parts of the instrument.
The design for the face consisted of me copying my body design so that the two would be consistent and adding the F-holes and slots for the bridge. This was the only time when I gave legitimate thought to how the pieces would be connected. I used the Zing laser-cutter and .2" thick material for consistency. Typically the face and back of violins are curved, but that would have required using a 2 way cut on the CNC router so for the sake of time and my own sanity I decided to make them flat. This probably decreased the sound quality.
The neck of the violin was the first of many, many disasters. I didn't know how to properly use adaptive clearing cuts going into this so I brought upon myself much unneeded grief. My initial design, which is still visible in Fusion, included both the back of the neck and the fingerboard. I designed the back of the neck by extruding a trapezoidal shape and then using the fillet option to give its round shape. I did some research and math and found that the neck is angled at 12 degrees from the body so I did my best to account for this. What I did not realize is that apparently the thickness of the fingerboard affects the sound quality. To stay within the 1.4" parameters of the router bit I removed the fingerboard from the design which I later realized that I did not need to do. The routing for this was slow and I messed it up twice because I did not understand Ryan's advice and was too socially anxious to ask for clarification. After the second failure he showed me that I needed to set stock settings in Fusion so that the router would know to clear out the entire material.
The tailpiece and the pegs were 3D printed. The only issues I ran into with this was that I printed the pegs too large and I didn't think of a way to attach the tailpiece. The pegs keep slipping in the final design, I am still trying to figure out ways to prevent this.
The scroll was just god awful. I did not have a plan or a design going into this, I just hoped that I would figure it out when I got there. I watched a few videos of people carving them by hand, but what I settled on was printing out a diagram of a scroll and gluing it to a chunk of wood. I then used the band saw to cut along the lines and the sanders to smooth it out. I did not bother to try for the fancy design often seen in scrolls because it was unnecessary and frankly too difficult. However, if I were to, the way I found was to cut the chunk of wood into pieces and cut them all at angles, each increasingly larger. I first cleared out the center section of where the pegs go and then drilled holes for the pegs, but this was too fragile so I made another scroll and repeated it in the opposite order. I used the hand drills, a drill press, and a lot of files in this section.
The main problem with my project came with a lack of foresight and this became obvious during the assembly portion. The face and body glued together just fine, but once I tried to attack the neck and the scroll everything started to come undone. I tried several ways of attaching the scroll to the neck, but in the end Ryan and I ended up shooting staples into the joint. It was not pretty and I had to cut and file away a lot of metal, but it held. I first attached the neck to the body with glue and sawdust to fill the gap, but this did not hold so I drove a single screw in. What I should have done was, prior to gluing on the face, put a block in the top of the body so I could have something to properly drill into. This held, but wasn't stable, because why would it be with a single screw into .2" thick material. Jamie gave me the idea to screw through the fingerboard which secured it all at least a little better.
I enjoyed working on this project except for the last day when the panic set in. I think I will rework my design and do more research to find out what works best. Maybe eventually I will be able to make a violin that sounds halfway decent.
The first piece I designed was the main body. To do this I traced a sketch of a violin in Fusion and scaled it to the right size. Because I did it like this, the body isn't perfectly curved, but it is rather close. I extruded the design to 2" (I changed this a few times and settled on 1.4" to account for the depth of the router bit) and used the shell function in Fusion to hollow it out. I had to stack several sheets of 3/4" plywood and glue them together to get this height. I routed it out with a 1/4 flat bit on the X-Carve, which took a few hours. If I were to redo this step I would probably rework my design to be smoother and also use one piece of solid material instead of the plywood. I think that this was one of my most successful parts of the instrument.
The design for the face consisted of me copying my body design so that the two would be consistent and adding the F-holes and slots for the bridge. This was the only time when I gave legitimate thought to how the pieces would be connected. I used the Zing laser-cutter and .2" thick material for consistency. Typically the face and back of violins are curved, but that would have required using a 2 way cut on the CNC router so for the sake of time and my own sanity I decided to make them flat. This probably decreased the sound quality.
The neck of the violin was the first of many, many disasters. I didn't know how to properly use adaptive clearing cuts going into this so I brought upon myself much unneeded grief. My initial design, which is still visible in Fusion, included both the back of the neck and the fingerboard. I designed the back of the neck by extruding a trapezoidal shape and then using the fillet option to give its round shape. I did some research and math and found that the neck is angled at 12 degrees from the body so I did my best to account for this. What I did not realize is that apparently the thickness of the fingerboard affects the sound quality. To stay within the 1.4" parameters of the router bit I removed the fingerboard from the design which I later realized that I did not need to do. The routing for this was slow and I messed it up twice because I did not understand Ryan's advice and was too socially anxious to ask for clarification. After the second failure he showed me that I needed to set stock settings in Fusion so that the router would know to clear out the entire material.
The tailpiece and the pegs were 3D printed. The only issues I ran into with this was that I printed the pegs too large and I didn't think of a way to attach the tailpiece. The pegs keep slipping in the final design, I am still trying to figure out ways to prevent this.
The scroll was just god awful. I did not have a plan or a design going into this, I just hoped that I would figure it out when I got there. I watched a few videos of people carving them by hand, but what I settled on was printing out a diagram of a scroll and gluing it to a chunk of wood. I then used the band saw to cut along the lines and the sanders to smooth it out. I did not bother to try for the fancy design often seen in scrolls because it was unnecessary and frankly too difficult. However, if I were to, the way I found was to cut the chunk of wood into pieces and cut them all at angles, each increasingly larger. I first cleared out the center section of where the pegs go and then drilled holes for the pegs, but this was too fragile so I made another scroll and repeated it in the opposite order. I used the hand drills, a drill press, and a lot of files in this section.
The main problem with my project came with a lack of foresight and this became obvious during the assembly portion. The face and body glued together just fine, but once I tried to attack the neck and the scroll everything started to come undone. I tried several ways of attaching the scroll to the neck, but in the end Ryan and I ended up shooting staples into the joint. It was not pretty and I had to cut and file away a lot of metal, but it held. I first attached the neck to the body with glue and sawdust to fill the gap, but this did not hold so I drove a single screw in. What I should have done was, prior to gluing on the face, put a block in the top of the body so I could have something to properly drill into. This held, but wasn't stable, because why would it be with a single screw into .2" thick material. Jamie gave me the idea to screw through the fingerboard which secured it all at least a little better.
I enjoyed working on this project except for the last day when the panic set in. I think I will rework my design and do more research to find out what works best. Maybe eventually I will be able to make a violin that sounds halfway decent.
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