Hi VWSatOZ,
I hadn't heard of a 'copy mill' before reading your post. It perked my interest so I did a google search, but the only thing I could come up with was cnc based copy mills. Do you happen to know of a link that would have a picture of a machine similar to what you describe? From your description, I think that I get the general idea. I'm currently using a router 'bridge' set-up to profile the ski cores. It uses template rails (one on each side of the core) to guides the depth of cut of the router. The router has a 1 1/2 inch 'fly cutter' type bit, so the actual process only takes about 5 minutes, which is fast enough that I can easily live with that part of the process. The main reason for wanting to go to a cnc based machine is that every pair of skis varies a bit in the thickness of one or more areas of the core. Even a 1/32 inch change in thickness in a particular area of the core can significantly change the performance characteristics of the ski, so I might have 30 or 40 basic core profiles that I'd like to be able to draw from. I have tons of templates already and they're kind of a pain to keep track of. It now takes me a good part of a day to make a new set of template rails. If I had a cnc programmable thickness planer, I could draw the profile up in CAD in about 5 minutes, then let the machine cut the profile. I could certainly use my almost finished cnc router to to profile the core blanks, but the cores get so thin (tips and tails) when profiling, that I'd have build a vacuum table to hold them down because the router tends to suck up and destroy them. In my experiments with my planer, it seems to handle the thin sections pretty well (I run them through on a shuttle board).
Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts.
Dana  |