I've thought that LinuxCNC might make a good basis for a universal barrel rifling machine, either using a small off-the-shelf carbide insert, or using custom carbide cutters. There's a shop close to me that will make custom carbide cutters.
The very well done animated video from your link demonstrated some clever old school mechanisms (sine bar, rack and pinion, pawl, etc. Almost all of that could be replaced by LinuxCNC with some stepper motors or servo motors and encoders. The manual rifling method requires a custom cutter to be made that is hammered/pulled through the bore. That's how rifle barrels were rifled in the old days. The angle on the end of the cutter determined the rifling rate (rate of twist), and it was a bit of an art with some trial and error. A barrel smith might want one turn in nine inches and might get one turn in 10.3 inches. Using LinuxCNC to essentially thread the inside of the bore should ensure a precise and repeatable rate of twist. If you follow through with this project, I'd love to see what you create and the results you get. Boring and rifling barrels is a specialized trade. There aren't many companies that do it. The equipment is quite specific to the task. Most firearms manufacturers buy rifled barrel blanks and do the finish work - threading the muzzle, cutting the chamber, fluting, etc. It's about time for CNC to make it much easier to cut barrel rifling. On 09/04/2014 10:04 PM, Len Shelton wrote: > We have a customer who is wanting to make a motor controlled rifling > machine. I spent a good bit of time researching it for him today and I > was surprised that it seems that no one is doing it with motors (or at > least I couldn't find anyone). I understand the need for the linear > relationship of the cutter to the position of the indexer in such a > machine. But I wanted to hear your guys thoughts on doing this with > motors, which will inherently have some degree of granular positioning. > > Here is the best machine design I could find that really demonstrates > the issue: > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_yemjfgkE0 > > >Len > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Slashdot TV. > Video for Nerds. Stuff that matters. > http://tv.slashdot.org/ > _______________________________________________ > Emc-users mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Slashdot TV. Video for Nerds. Stuff that matters. http://tv.slashdot.org/ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
