Hi All Has anyone come up with, or seen, a novel way to make an automatic lathe chuck?
These devices, hydraulic or pneumatic, are eye wateringly expensive. Getting something in and out of the chuck is one of the main sticking points in a small scale automation lathe. While one could often get away with two fixed jaws and the third activated, it still requires a lot of fiddling between jobs. Collet draw-in chucks are too limited in their scope. Possibly the easiest way is to have a motor with reduction drive mounted on the carrige at centre height, and perpendicular to the Z. The drive shaft is ended with a square. The chuck would rotate into position, and the drive shaft motioned into place and the chuck opened and closed much as one would do manually. This way, you could; - tighten each jaw if you wanted to - control the clamping force - open/close the chuck over it's full range without having to adjust jaws between jobs - still allow manual operation Any ideas? Regards Roland PS, the load/unload robot is a seperate issue;) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Apps built with the Adobe(R) Flex(R) framework and Flex Builder(TM) are powering Web 2.0 with engaging, cross-platform capabilities. Quickly and easily build your RIAs with Flex Builder, the Eclipse(TM)based development software that enables intelligent coding and step-through debugging. Download the free 60 day trial. http://p.sf.net/sfu/www-adobe-com _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
