Help designing tool.

[LEFLEY]

I’m looking for help designing a tool where by I can router consistent groves in woodturned objects. The object I am going to put groves into will be mounted in a lathe.as the router goes from one end of the hollow form to the other, I need a consistent way, gearing, to rotate the object in a preset way.

 

[IRstuff]

Sounds to me like you're describing a CNC router, given that you presumably want to rout arbitrary shapes. Additionally, you'll probably want the router to behave like a CMM to get the exact contour of the shape, get it into a CAD program, and the have it spit out the trajectories and motions to the router.

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[GregLocock]

You could use a dremel mounted in the toolpost of a Blanchard lathe, if you want to go old-school.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[tygerdawg]

It appears from the picture that you have the luxury of working with wood, which is relatively soft. And very shallow grooves, which doesn't require a lot of machine strength.
With the current offerings of CAD & CNC software, you have a number of options I can think of.
Doing this for very low cost probably not an option.

[ul]
[li]CNC Turning centers could do this all in one package, but $$$$$. Maybe you can find small/used/cheap on the market.[/li]
[li]You could design & build a multi-axis fixturing device with a rotary chuck + longtidinal axis + transverse axis, but $$$.[/li]
[li]Given that it is wood and shallow cut grooves, this opens the opportunity for a small 6-axis robot with attached milling spindle. Maybe you could find used still in OK shape. You would need software to get the CNC cutter program into the robot controller.[/li]
[/ul]


TygerDawg
Blue Technik LLC
Virtuoso Robotics Engineering

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[btrueblood]

OP wants to "find a consistent way to rotate the part", cutting the curve is not his priority. Certainly CNC will index the part in rotation, as well as forming the curved shape.

But the old school way to rotate an object being machined through a fixed, repeatable rotation and then hold it there, would be to use an indexing head (also called a dividing head), or a rotary table, either or both of which are going to be cheaper than a CNC machine. The router would be set up to follow a template that forms the curved shape you want. The spiral taper is a bit trickier, and would involve a leadscrew to move the router, this is more common on metal turning lathes that are built to machine (frinstance) screw threads.

 

[EdStainless]

In the old days this was all done with gears and linkages.
Still the method used for engraving the patterns on high end watch faces.

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[MacGyverS2000]

You want a Rose Engine lathe... plenty of examples out there, including folks who have turned a standard wood lathe into a semi-Rose with appropriate selection of indexing plate and a router connected to the ways via an adjustable gear set.


Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

 

[MintJulep]

Searching YouTube for "Cutting spiral on lathe" will give you lots of options to start from.

 

[3DDave]

Time for a new Matthias Wandel project.