Lathe

[Brian Harnett]

I made this a while ago not long after I bought my bot, it gets used on occasion not as sophisticated as an indexer it works fine for general turning. At the time I used what I had at hand in the shop some 1 1/4 steel square tube, flange bearings support the drive side and a metal lathe live center is the tail stock.

Just did some table legs for a customer on it.

https://i.ibb.co/cJNTt2K/DSCN4318.jpg

https://i.ibb.co/xSYnhFR/DSCN4317.jpg

https://i.ibb.co/PFMtgGG/DSCN4315.jpg

A short video of it running I put a few clips together the whole leg takes around 25 minutes to cut.

https://vimeo.com/318999193

[coryatjohn]

Clever, these earthlings...

[chiloquinruss]

Brian, how did you layout the design? Since the object is spinning and not slightly rotating as in an indexer, is the design work the same? It is very cool and I'm going to give it a try. BTW I have Aspire. Russ

[Brian Harnett]

Russ I draw the edge profile in cad extrude it make an stl thats what my cam program likes, and toolpath it like a normal flat relief I set the raster path to go forward and back then drop a 16th at a time. I drop my y axis out of the gear rack and clamp the carriage centered over the workpiece. I use a 6mm ball nose bit for cutting. If it sounds complicated its me explaining it, its very simple to do.

[bill.young]

Hey Brian,

If you're feeling adventuresome there's a utility called the Flipper that post-processes a toolpath created from an X-Y profile drawing and virtually flips it on edge so that it's either X-Z or Y-Z. It might save the stl step.

It's been around since the Part Wizard days but worked the way I expected the last time I used it. It's installed on my Windows 10 computer at "C:\Program Files (x86)\ShopBot\Virtual Tools\Utilities\flipper" and there's even some rudimentary instructions in the folder.

Bill

[Brian Harnett]

Hey Brian,

If you're feeling adventuresome there's a utility called the Flipper that post-processes a toolpath created from an X-Y profile drawing and virtually flips it on edge so that it's either X-Z or Y-Z. It might save the stl step.

It's been around since the Part Wizard days but worked the way I expected the last time I used it. It's installed on my Windows 10 computer at "C:\Program Files (x86)\ShopBot\Virtual Tools\Utilities\flipper" and there's even some rudimentary instructions in the folder.

Bill

Thanks Bill, I just checked it out may come in handy.

[bill.young]

Hey Brian,

Hope it works for you. Most of those old virtual tools were created before toolpathing software got so good and easy to use, but sometimes they are handy.

[Brian Harnett]

Hey Brian,

Hope it works for you. Most of those old virtual tools were created before toolpathing software got so good and easy to use, but sometimes they are handy.

Yes, I have used the SB image converter to make lithophanes it works really well. I remember using typesetter in the beginning too.