Van Halenized Truss Rod Covers I Made

**axebrian** · 06.09.06, 07:49 PM

Jesus, I'm so sorry about the quality of these pics...Wifey left my dig. camera with family 700 miles away

but that's a whole different story.

So, I used the cheezy "video cam" on this PC. It in no way does these things justice, ( these are actually detailed down to .0005"... a human hair is about .0030" or more)... but I was exited about showing someone these. I'll post better pics when I get my cam back

Sorry, again.

I made these truss rod covers today for my 2 Carvins (DC400 & CT6) and one for my original 79 Dean ML. I program CNC machines for a living (really nothing to do with these, but I sometimes get to use the stuff on my own time) The software/machines out there today allows us to customize anything from just a logo, pic or scan...pretty cool stuff. I mean you can engrave your pet, child or literally ANYTHING with this stuff. Some guys at the training seminars that I've attended are making a Killing evgraving everything from Christmas Ornaments, stuff for HD cycles to pool cues, just to name a few. So here's my cheezy pics. Basically, I just scanned the logo and my existing truss rod covers, bought some material from stew mac and created a program from the software to cut them. Oh, and the cycle time to cut these was 3.5 and 4.1 minutes.
I'm in no way trying to "sell" anything here. I just made some for my own personal use....

**lal5150** · 06.09.06, 08:15 PM

very nice............

**Ted Van Halen** · 06.10.06, 04:56 AM

Cool!

Are the machines for production work or is it a job shop? What software are you using? We just got Mastercam at work. I'm pretty tight w/ the machine shop supervisor so I might customize my neckplate. He's pretty cool about the occassional "government job" as long as he sanctions it.

TED

**axebrian** · 06.10.06, 07:51 AM

Originally Posted by Ted Van Halen

Cool!

Are the machines for production work or is it a job shop? What software are you using? We just got Mastercam at work. I'm pretty tight w/ the machine shop supervisor so I might customize my neckplate. He's pretty cool about the occassional "government job" as long as he sanctions it.

TED

Ted,
The machines we use are for production work and for making custom control panels. The one was I used for this was a CNC Vertical Mill. It's a Fadal EMC. We're using BOBcad software with a "Bobart" pluggin. The pluggin allows me to scan or take a photo and turn it into a Cad,dwg or dxf drawing that can be machined. The term is Called vectorizing. It changes photos etc, from "Rastor" to "Vector" files.

Mastercam is VERY high end software and prolly the best out there. I'm not sure about their art pluggin though. I can email you this DXF drawing that can easily be programmed with Mastercam, if you like. They can scale it up or down to fit your needs. I also have a clipart CD with thousands of DXF files. Both Mastercam and Bobcad can turn ANY font in to drawings that can be machined.