CNC turning on a CNC mill

[Roger]

I was going to put this on "What I've done today" but it's a bit long and I don't want to hog the space since it's a more niche subject.


20180206_174957 by Roger Froud, on Flickr

I needed to make 30 pieces made from Delrin which have a spherical end. That's a pain to do on the lathe, so I'd got the choice of turning the OD and making a form tool for the radius, or use the mill for the whole profile.

I normally only set up the mill for 20 or more pieces, or where the geometry makes it difficult on a manual lathe.

20180206_175024 by Roger Froud, on Flickr



20180206_181141 by Roger Froud, on Flickr

This is the tooling plate...

20180206_175649 by Roger Froud, on Flickr

... and the back of it. The ER32 collet chucks are cheap ones from China that I parted off their mounts.

20180206_175702 by Roger Froud, on Flickr

And this is the way I create profiles for it. Here they're shown on top of each other. It's a bit laborious because I don't have the Lathe CAM software, that's expensive and I use it so little as to not justify that.

So instead, I use the mill CAM package and define the part on the X/Y plane. I've written a utility program that switched that to X/Z and also adds offsets for each tool I use.

There's a tool offset table that I can change whenever I set up a new tool.

Anyway, the results speak for themselves and it's a short cycle time when it's running. I knocked these out this afternoon.

Here's a video of the whole cycle.

The tool paths are inverted here. It's a consequence of the way the axes will be changed by the utility program.

Tool paths by Roger Froud, on Flickr

[dscott]

Looking lovely Roger.
I am just off the phone from Bearing Boys who if you ask also do Hiwin rails and carriages cut to length!
Over years in the University I was given ends of experiments like a surface table unused except for things
bolted upon so I now feel free to use the holes for a clamping down for a set up etc.
From the same person came 2 ballscrews, a small headstock and lots of inspiration to make a CNC lathe.
This week I have been forced indoors so have various projects set up on the sitting room floor!
Alan keys in the workshop to remove the nut from its holder. This will need cutting down to fit into
the bed. Another guy was leaving so I came in for his heavy metal collection of 30 by 40 mild steel so the
Vee bed came about. About the size of your dream workshop came the twst room kept for some reason at 20 degrees?
We tried 2 clocks as they did not move along the bed he says smiling!
So we now have a great place for the screw.
The rails are for the very long crosslide with a sprinkling of tools and drills positioned when we get it running!

My new mill will now come into its own to help make the bits all line up!
The plan being that I can set up and the machine gets on with a boring batch while I do some hand worked bits like
setting up wheels to run true etc.

David and Lily still cold.