Re: Lathe Hexapod

[Ray <rehenry-at-up.net>]

I've had to service a bunch of live tooling from some pretty reputable
makers and the cost is huge.  One shop found it less expensive for most
parts to pay for second op.  So they moved a small mill alongside a pair of
lathes.  They have several shelves full of no longer used live tooling.

But put the spindle flat with the work up and make some sort of tool
changer for the stewart platform and I could see it.

Ray



On Sun, 25 Feb 2001, you wrote:
> > Lay two legs of the cage down, with a big hole in the bottom to drop the
> > chips through?  
> 
> or mount the tools pointing outwards(or forwards for drills) from the ring
> and 'wobble' the platform around the centerline for short chucking work
> 
> > I thought maybe it could be a cheap way of building a CNC lathe.  No cast
> > iron to scrape, no linear ways to align.  Put it together, don't worry
> > about alignment, cut a test part, measure the part, input measurements into
> > control- then cut the rest of the parts perfect....?
> 
> being able to lock the main spindle and do some milling with live tools on
> the platform realy opens up the posibiitys for lathe work as well (no more
> 2nd opps  :-)  )
> 
> I like the basic idea  ,its got me thinking of what problems might pop up and 
> trying to imagine the simplest ways to solve them
> I'm sure there are probably several ways to make it work
> 
> Brian