The journey
From digital instruments
to the machine that makes them.
It started with 3D printed instruments — violins, concertinas, parts designed digitally and brought to life in plastic. The workflow was good. The results were interesting. But wood has something plastic doesn't. Resonance. History. Life.
To work in wood with the same precision that digital design allows, you need a machine that doesn't exist off the shelf — not at the level of accuracy that instrument making requires. So the answer was to build one.
The design went through ten iterations. A bed slinger was considered and abandoned. A fixed gantry was drawn and reconsidered. The moving-gantry design that emerged balances stiffness, travel, and the specific bed size needed to accommodate a violin top or a concertina lid.
The parts were specified in SolidWorks with tolerances, sent to a machinist in China, and arrived last month. They bolted together. There was one mistake on the Z axis — caught early, remade cheaply. One batch of taps was the wrong size for the bearing housings — solved with 3D printed replacements that work perfectly. Real engineering is adaptation.
The goal now is a machine that cuts spruce, maple, and sycamore to violin-grade tolerances — and when the next machine comes, the knowledge to customise it completely.
Build timeline
6 months ago
First sketches in SolidWorks. Bed slinger concept explored.
Iterations 1–5
Fixed gantry explored. Extrusion sizes determined by bed requirements for violin plates.
Iterations 6–10
Moving gantry finalised. Ball screws specified. Dual-rail configuration locked in.
Last month
Parts arrive from China. Z axis error caught and remade. 3D printed bearing housings fabricated as fix.
Now
Assembly complete. Wiring next. First cuts soon.