Non-Circular Turning

[andypugh]

I have been experimenting with non-circular turning, using synchronised motion of the X axis with the spindle on my 7x14 lathe.

It uses a custom HAL component in EMC2, which takes the output of the spindle encoder and uses that and a lookup table to calculate an offset to the X-axis position that is then passed on to the step generator.

Whilst the shape being turned in the video below is approximately circular, that is only because my spindle is very short of torque at low speeds, my X-axis is fairly slow, and that is the most elaborate shape I could manage.

It would be perfectly possible to alter the amount of offset on the fly, to make really rather odd shapes. multi-lobe cams would also be possible, limited mainly by the clearance angle of the tool.

YouTube- ‪eccentric‬‎

[mcphill]

Nicely done! With a servo for speed and torque, you could turn some really interesting shapes...

[Algirdas]

Very nice! congratulations. You need Y axis or possibility to change cutting (attack) angle to have more complicated shapes done.