Puppet Head, Turned on the Indexer

[jdervin]

For a show we're staging this coming November, we need to make several Japanese Bunraku-style puppets. Some will likely be hand-carved by professional puppeteers (similar to the first image below). Others will need to be made by me and my students. To make sure I'm ready to teach this stuff when the fall semester begins, I've begun experimenting with ShopBot options. At this point, it's merely a learning exercise, but may evolve into performance versions soon enough.

The original model came from the Google 3D Warehouse and the practice piece was turned on the indexer from a scrap piece of 4x4.

[dougo]

Very nice job.. Now we need to know all the details:)

[scottbot]

Very cool. Especially for a learning excercise.
I agree with Doug. Details man details.

[gc3]

Nice! Can you post photos of the indexer and was it wrapped in Aspire?

[jdervin]

Details...

Roughing:
1/4" End Mill (spiral upcut); 1/4" step down; 40% stepover
Y-parallel raster (Indexer is X-parallel)
Move Rate = 1.7 ips
Plunge Rate = 0.5 ips
B-Move Rate = 55.66° per second
Approximately 20 minutes cutting time

Finishing:
1/8" Ball Nose; 10% stepover
3D Offset Sprial machine relief
Move Rate = 3.0 ips
Plunge Rate = 2.0 ips
B-Move Rate = 98.22° per second
Approximately 25 minutes cutting time

[jdervin]

Here's a link showing my current indexer set up:

http://www.colby.edu/personal/j/jdervin/ShopBot/IndexerMounting.htm

Import, unwrapping, smoothing, re-wrapping and toolpaths were all done in ArtCAM.

[gc3]

nice indexer setup....thx for posting

[dana_swift]

How did you create the toolpaths from the model?

[jdervin]

In ArtCAM, after using the "Create Rotary Relief" command, I use the standard "Z-Level Roughing" and "Machine Relief" tools and it ends up looking like this...

[myxpykalix]

Good job John looks great and you have pretty good cut times. Your next puppet head should be of Jerry Mahoney or Knucklehead Smiff
(who gets the reference?:rolleyes:)