--- On Sun, 3/24/13, andy pugh <bodge...@gmail.com> wrote: > At first I thought you were talking about motorising the > existing > arms, but reading more carefully, I think you are talking > about > pulling the arm around with cables and drums? > When I thought you were talking about motorising the arm I > was going > to suggest pulling the arm around with cables and drums > instead :-) > > Alex Joni has done this on a small scale. > http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Alex_Joni's_Toy
Pretty much exactly like that, but on a tool that's about 4x4 feet. Would have to build the motor supports so at least two sides of the table aren't blocked. Could possibly build it heavy enough to cantilever out from the same side that the arm is on, can't have the work hanging out that side anyway. The guy who owns the shop is pushing 80 but is interested in adding some CNC capability, especially if it's easy to use on pieces that're often one-off parts - if it can be faster than doing it by hand. I've seen the stuff he's cut with this pattern follower, plenty of circles and sort of C shaped parts, some pieces that have a two different sizes of circular ends with tangent edges and a hole in each end. I figure the time savings would mostly come from not having to make a physical pattern every time some new shape/size has to be cut. Another common problem with this old tool is when the drive magnet gets stuck in an inside corner or pops loose from the pattern so the torch goes wandering off across the slab of steel. CNC control would fix that. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Everyone hates slow websites. So do we. Make your web apps faster with AppDynamics Download AppDynamics Lite for free today: http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_mar _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
