Large diameter turning and gearing?

[myxpykalix]

I have an idea of taking a round table i'm making that might be 4 ft diameter that would have probably a 2+ inch skirt around it and carving some type of design on the face around the entire circumference.

That would entail moving the indexer to a location where the tabletop could be mounted so it would rotate under the gantry but i'm wondering if there would need to be any different type of gearing due to the larger circumference or is it as simple as making the file the same size as the circumference of the skirt?

[Brady Watson]

You can do it either way, however it is not very realistic since you'd need to either dig a pit or prop the machine way up just to be able to do that. Your stock indexer is not up to the task because the straight gears in that 10:1 motor you have will result in over 0.25" of backlash way out at that circumference. It makes no difference whether you unwrap the Y or use it as a rotary B.

It may be more realistic to simply cut into a material that could be kerf scarfed on the back and/or steam bent, and wrapped around the shape that you need.

-B