flutes on a taper

[blackhawk]

Hasn't been a lot of posts lately in the Indexer section, so I thought that I would throw in a picture. I just made this out of some hard maple that I was playing around with. I wanted to try making flutes on a taper. It worked out pretty well. Aspire makes it easy. I roughed this out with a 1/2" ballnose and did the final machining and flutes with a 1/4" ballnose.

[rcnewcomb]

Nice work Brad. Did you need to match an existing piece or was this a new design?

[myxpykalix]

Brad "that is just slicker then snot on a doorknob":eek:

explain how you did your flutes on a taper? Did you have to use the profile of the part for that? What machining strategy did you use? How long did it take to make this? nice work:D

[blackhawk]

Randall - This was a new design. I just hadn't made anything on the indexer for a long time and I just made this up as a sample piece. I actually had to go back and look at your tutorial to freshen up my brain on the indexer.

Jack - With Aspire, they have a fluting gadget that will equally space your flutes and it allows you to taper in the tool over any distance that you want. Once that is setup, you make a profile toolpath and then just select to project the toolpath on the 3D surface. I forgot to look at my elapsed time on the 3D finish cutting, but I think that it took about an hour for everything.