CNC for pearl inlay

[Anthony Scira]

Hey guys. I am a laser guy. But the laser does not cut pearl or alabam. I primarily do small inlay for guitar fretboards. So I only need a small machine. But I would like to be able to have decent resolution. It needs to be tight. Like a 12" x 12" would be more than enough. if it has the capability for a pass through.

Can anyone point me in the right direction as far a a machine would go ?

Here are some maple inlays I have done. Just a few people are wanting pearl.......

Inlays

[William Adams]

If you’re willing to go a bit smaller, the Nomad 883 (8" x 8" x 3") from Carbide 3D might be suitable.

The ShapeOko 3 is comfortably larger at 16" x 16 or so (incl. overhang any the front).

Not unbiased here though. There’s a list of machines on a wiki page for the hobbycnc subreddit.

[Anthony Scira]

That Nomad looks cool ! A little more than I wanted to spend. But them being local would be worth the added expense.

[Andy Fahl]

Anthony,
If you're doing small, intricately detailed work like fretboard inlays, be sure to compare the specs on the tolerances the various machines will hold. You will want to have a machine that will hold tolerance as tightly as possible. Hope this helps!

[Mike Null]

Anthony

This was done with multiple passes from the back side with my laser. It is .050" abalone. I used several passes so as not to shatter the abalone with too much heat.

[David Falkner]

Anthony

This was done with multiple passes from the back side with my laser. It is .050" abalone. I used several passes so as not to shatter the abalone with too much heat.

Hey Mike,

I'd sure like to know how you were able to pull that off; I was at my local laser shop (trophy shop with 3 lasers) and we tried for an hour to cut some 0.040" thick Abalone on his fairly new 60 watt Epilog. What we were trying to cut is slightly smaller than your 'Foster' but not by much and all it did was slightly engrave the text but left a raised boundary. We moved the Abalone and cut the same thing into scrap wood and it cut perfectly. These guys run their lasers all day every day and are very proficient at what they do but they had not tried Abalone or MOP before.

He tried multiple passes at different power settings, including full power, and even tried to cut a straight line across a small piece but even that didn't cut through this stuff. Any help you can offer will be greatly appreciated!!

Thanks,
David

[Mike Null]

David

On my first try I cracked the abalone using too much power. On the second attempt, I lowered the power by quite a lot, I don't recall exactly how much but I made about 10 passes, all from the back side.

The abalone and MOP both have varying densities so some parts will engrave (cut) easily but other areas are quite hard and require multiple passes. I understand that thinner material is available but this is what the customer supplied.

I always cut inlays from the back so that the actual surface size is closer to the size i'm trying to achieve. (the shape of the laser beam is somewhat like an hourglass so a couple thousandths would be visible.)
I can't say that a laser is the ideal tool for this job but it was all I had.

[Kevin Jenness]

Mike, did you cut the recess for that inlay with the laser?

[Mike Null]

Yes and I cut the abalone to the same size, but as I mentioned, from the back, which gave a pretty good fit. I used super glue as the adhesive. I believe I made three engraving passes to get the depth I wanted on the recess. The guitar neck was maple.

This was the plate I engraved that the customer fastened to the guitar. It was chrome plated. I can't explain the brass color.

Note:

Usually when I'm doing inlays I want the inlay to stand proud of the surface but in this case I wanted it to be flush as I wanted no part of trying to polish abalone, not having had any previous experience with it.

[Paul Lawrence]

Mke, FYI, if you place your object to be photographed on a plain white (or light grey) background, your camera will not have trouble focusing on the object itself.

[Mike Null]

Paul

Thanks. I'll give that a try. I do most of my pictures with a cell phone so that may be part of the problem as well.

[Brian Lamb]

The gold color in the photo looks like a reflection of the wall behind where you took the photo, maybe a wood grained wall from the looks of it? Highly polished items create a whole set of new issues when trying to photograph them.

[Tim Boger]

That is very nice work, I would love to be able to incorporate that level of engraving into my turned bowls ... I would think the size would need to be small enough to not be affected by the gentle curves of a hand turned bowl.