Pin Router Duplicator

This project is intended to help speed up the production for guitar bodies, necks, and fret boards. First, two plates, two flat bars, base plate for router, and flat bar for stylus mount will be purchased from MetalsDepot.com When choosing a material for all the necessary components, the strength of the material should exceed the minimum bending stress requirements to ensure that the duplicator doesn’t fail. The two plates are going to be supporting the whole router head. Most parts will be machined in the machine shop, located in Hogue at Central Washington University. The only thing that isn’t machined is the router. An issue that occurred is misalignment. Some holes on the two plates didn't match up with each other, which made the 4 bar linkage system not function correctly. To fix this issue, the holes were over drilled to fix the misalignment. Furthermore, the housing for the router needs to have holes drilled to match with the base plate. Once the router head is assembled, then it will be attached to the base frame by using nuts and bolts, which will be either provided by the school or purchased at a hardware store. By minimizing the number of custom manufactured parts, the router head will be easier to maintain throughout its design life.

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Design Description:

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The basic structure of the router head is going to be similar to a 4 bar linkage system. There will be two plates of equal length. Each plate will have 4 linkage mounts mounted to them with a total of 4 linkage arms connecting the two plates together. There will be a rod that runs through the linkage arms and linkage mount. The rod has two holes for clevis pins to be inserted. This will allow the linkage arms and linkage mounts to stay intact. The router is going to be secured in a housing (provided by Central Washington University), which is going to be bolted down onto the base plate. The stylus is going to be mounted into the stylus mount with a set screw. The set screw allows the stylus to be adjusted for different depths of cut. The router and stylus will have at least 6 inches of travel to plunge into the woodwork in the Z-axis. The router and stylus will be able to move along the shaft in the X-axis. A guitar body blank is 16inches. There will be two bodies on the platform. Between each body, the distance is 1 inch. The router and stylus will be 16” from each other, which will provide enough clearance, so that router and stylus won’t interfere with one another.

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Manufacturing Issues:

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One issue that may arrive from machining most parts, is alignment. There may be misalignment if caution is not taken when laying out hole centers. Although bolting parts together is a sufficient route, it doesn’t provide a rigid structure, and is more prone to failure over time. Another issue that may occur is turning the outside diameter of the end mills. If the outside diameter is too large or too small, it may not sit flush in the stylus.