non-circular lathe turning Help!

[oldguy]

First off let me explain: I am not experienced with CNC or electronics, but I have a varied background in machining, woodworking and many other fields. I have been a lifetime in industry (plating, powder coating, oil drilling, stainless steel fabrication, weding, printing, manufacturing, assembly, formula road racing cars, and a whole slew of various other areas.) I have always been an inventor, but always did it for my employer, never for myself. I am now retired and I am doing it for myself and friends. I also want to bring along some talented young people who are on the road I was and help them to "do it for themselves" before they get old like me. Now to my problem:

I need a way to turn on a metal lathe a non-circular item. I also need a way to digitize a pattern for various hand sculpted patterns for later turning on a lathe as described. As an example imagine a hand sculped model of a fish (without fins, of course.) It would need to be rotated on its linear axis in a lathe and a probe would have to scan the surface as though a laser light would replace a tool in the toolpost while the leadscrew moved it along the length from one end to the other. The probe would digitize the profile of the model fish. Then, because a hand sculpted model would never be exactly mirror image, one side to the other, I need to be able, using software, to mirror image one side and reverse it to the other so the resulting digital image would be exactly symetrical, left side and right side. The purpose is to be able to then duplicate the trued symetrical image on the lathe in a more durable material thanm the original, say in aluminium or steel. Also I would like to be able to turn the digital "fish" inside out. The purpose would be to use a CNC mill to cut out matching halves from flat plate as though I were making two halves of a mold to reproduce the original, perfected (ie. now symetrical) "fish".

Actually the processes I described are to be used for several projects, but the "fish" analogy works as a good way to visulize my needs.

What I need to know is this: are any of you familiar with any inexpensive way to take off a digitized profile of an irrigular surface and then "smoothing" the transitions from one pass to the next via software that I can afford? And how about the actual probe? I am sure there are both contact and non-contact probes available, but how to do it inexpensively is a problem, especially for one like ne who is not an electronics or computer person. Remember, I am a nuts and bolts guy. I also imagine several out there could use the software and lathe modifications to turn non-circular parts themselves.

Anyone ?

[ynneb]

I'm not really the guy who knows much about what your asking, but I do know of certain tools that may help you. Firstly there is a process that scans an image by taking digital pictures from different angles.
The pictures are decoded by software to give you a 3 dimantional image. I am sure that doing a negative of your 3D image would be no problem for this kind of software. I Cant remember its name though. I will try and find out.

When you say non circular lathe, I am interpreting what you mean is a mill with 4 axis's. The 4th axis is what rotates your workpeice and the first 3 axis' is the tool axis.

I am rather new to this too. But from what I think you are saying, it can be done. You mention cheaply !
If you had only one thing to do I guess it would be best to see if somone in this forum could do it for you.

[turmite]

Hey oldguy...man that sounds disrespectful. My dad would have tore me a new one for that! I bet that ages me doesn't it?

Anyway, oldguy, do a search for a Bacci 3d copy lathe. One site I am pretty sure you can find one is www.exfactory.com

I am in the middle of finishing one that I designed and had built two yrs ago. It is a hybrid machine. Part manual trace and part cnc. I designed this one so i could use a right had pattern and cut both a right and left had model at the same time. I don't know how that would work for left handed fish but....

Mike