|
|
|
CNC-Lathe Hybrids 
Question
Forum Responses
From the original questioner: Thanks, I left out a small detail I didn't think was important, after cutting out the cylinders, we are going to cut them into 4th's, what we have left is casing to go around the base boards of something. So since we aren't leaving them as cylinders I don't think the halves route would work. I think I have a good idea of how I would program it, I just wanted to make sure a moving object wouldn't cause some sort of reaction I wasn't expecting. From contributor E: Thermwood makes a rotary playback device for its routers. There is a limit, of course, on the diameter and length. The video below is a sample of what can be done.
From contributor J: Below is a small 4th axis lathe. This might give you some ideas. They can also be setup to do dovetail drawers off the end of the table. What type of machine do you have?  Click here for higher quality, full size image From contributor M: You can still do exactly as I described above, just do quarters instead of halves. They can be full right angle quarters or you can clip the inside corner, but leave enough perpendicular flat at the tangents to attach to the next piece. From contributor K: I tried exactly what you are talking about once. I simply mounted my wood lathe to the bed of the router and programed the profile I wanted. What I discovered is the lathe, even at it's slowest speed, turned to fast and caused a fair amount of a chatter type look in the piece. If the lathe where to be slowed down I think it would work fine. However all that being said, it sounds like you are making radius base corners and it may be way easier and cheaper to farm it out. From the original questioner: To contributor E: that is what I'm looking for. My boss already had the device made in house, so my last question is, does this take a special bit or can it be done with any standard routing bit? From contributor E: Standard tooling works just fine. Feed rates and spindle speeds are important. Note in the video that the 4th axis does not spin as fast as a lathe. I'm not an expert by any means but I have used the rotary playback. From contributor C: I built a lathe attachment for ours, from a DC tread mill motor with variable speed. I had a plywood bed, which is held with a vacuum. I had to machine the drive center and the whole tailstock. We have a fair machine shop as a separate business. The trick is to use the correct shear and rotation/feed direction to prevent blowouts in roughing and then use a standard, duplicating lathe tool for the finish pass. This is fairly simple on out machines as it has three heads. The lathe tool is simply mounted in a holder that bolts on in T-slots below the head. We did about 250 Western Red Cedar ballusters and it worked great.
Would you like to add information to this article? Interested in writing or submitting an article? Have a question about this article? Have you reviewed the related Knowledge Base areas below? 
|
