I thought I'd throw this out here because some of the ideas passed around are really good. I thought someone might have a helpful suggestion.
I have an application where we need to grind a ball-end on the end of rod that can be between 0.5 meters to 2 meters long and vary in diameter from about 1.25mm to 8mm. Currently, it's done by hand on rotary disk sander. The material is stainless steel or titanium. It seems like a solution might be a small cnc'd lathe and bar feeder type application and it needs to be easy to use and quick. 1. How do I cut/grind the hemisphere? I'm thinking a small CNC type lathe should do it? I read on practicalmachinist.com that for manual lathes they often use a custom tool at the radius they want to cut, but I have varying radii, so it didn't seem like that would be a good solution. Using a CNC would solve the varying radii problem. Either a sensor or operator manually enters dia. 2. How do I hold and spin the rod? Especially, w/ differing diameters that can show up at any time. Here were some ideas, but they don't handle the differing diameters? http://www.processwelding.com/standardLathes.php http://www.4machining.com/4m-Tooling/Harig-All/Harig-Air-Collet-Closer What about a large rolling wheel driving against two idlers to rotate the bar? 3. Lastly, controlling the whip while the stock is rotating? I could see a barfeeder type application and then something to keep the rod from whipping? Thanks, Mark ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
