Production cnc
- Thread starter zx24
- Start date
Somethign like this http://bludworth.com/cuemaking_machines.htm
Here is a pic from cuecomponents web site. Very good looking machine.
Just why would you want to turn 5 butts at a time? Turning the butts is a relatively easy task and the thing that comes to my mind is how am I going to find time to finish 5 butts at once? Leonard has been pitching these machines to me for years but I never saw any advantage to turning multiple butts at once, unless you're trying to compete with Viking or the imports and that's stupid!
just more hot air!
Sherm
stupidity
I'm just trying to find out what equipment is available to turn multiple pieces of wood at one time. Not necessarily Butts.. I failed to mention
the contour. So its not just a straight taper.
I'm just trying to find out what equipment is available to turn multiple pieces of wood at one time. Not necessarily Butts.. I failed to mention
the contour. So its not just a straight taper.
It is not hard to come up with a machine that will taper several handles or even shafts. The trick is to be able to dial them all in to cut the exact same amount. For this you would need to cut a good handle on your master spindle, then dial the rest into the masters size. Now that would work great until the macine was moved or has settled. Then a small amount of tweeking would need to be done. You could fix the first one with software but need to manually need to adjust the rest.
good luck, Jim.
I always thought the same thing. 99% of the cuemakers out there aren't going to benefit from such a machine.
I disagree a little. Although it is way, way overkill for a hobbiest cue maker, one can be a great time saver for someone who builds a number of cues and shafts a year. I make 9 turns per shaft and about 6 per butt. If you turn a couple hundred shafts a year plus 50 to a hundred butts, that means a lot of time sitting watching expensive wood turn into cheap shavings. The same machine is used for all of these mundane tasks.
It is true that it is a very hard to get all of the stations to run exactly the same. Royce Bunnell was telling me how much trouble they went through setting up and maintaining their multiple shaft machine which I already was aware of. However, for a smaller, busy cue maker like myself, this is not a problem. I would use all of the stations making the incremental passes for both shafts and butts but just use one station that is trued correctly for the final pass. In that way it is easy for all of the non critical passes can be done in a very timely manner but the final, critical pass or passes can be done in the normal way. Of coarse this wouldn't be cost efficient for a hobbiest as they don't have the numbers to work with. Just my opinion.
Dick
http://cgi.ebay.com/Pool-Cue-CNC-ma...emQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item27ac206756
There's one to consider.
It only takes about 2 minutes to cut a shaft or butt.
If that's too long, you can mill some parts and turn more at the same time.
There's one to consider.
It only takes about 2 minutes to cut a shaft or butt.
If that's too long, you can mill some parts and turn more at the same time.
Nice set up..
Boy the prices just keep coming down. That looks like one of the best buys yet. Couple of things I'm not real crazy about. The Thompson type linear bearings and shafts have never appealed to me. I've bought a few smaller assembles on e-bay and their clearances just weren't as tight as I would want. I've bought a number of the double bearing blocks also which had just to much clearances. This may just be my bad luck in maybe getting worn out parts in every instance but that's my experience with them. I've never had any problems buying linear bearing trucks and rails with no problems.Next is the Kirk anti-backlash nuts. I've used these before and they worked well but being plastic I don't look for them to wear well long. Bob Griffen of Madison Bob cues had an Alignright that he crashed one night and stripped the threads off of the nuts. You aren't supposed to crash but things happen sometimes. I just like real ball screw assemblies.
These are just my opinions from my experiences and I could be wrong but there it is. This looks like one of the best buys I've seen but without hands on experience, who knows? I've recommended a couple of other cue repair lathes to people after watching demonstrations at trade shows and later when using them myself I was very disappointed in my recommendations.
Dick
Great points as usual Dick.
I bought my own THK ballscrew actuator for my X axis. Has linear blocks and is a frkn monster. This was not designed for a dusty environment though. So it needs a lot of TLC.
I suppose if you had a manual (non cnc) machine you'd have to sit and watch it. However I was referring to having a cnc machine that you can cycle and work on other things while it's running. Most cuemakers don't put out the numbers to warrant a multiple place unit, even full timers. JMHO.
We're getting spoiled. :grin:
It used to take my manual lightweight taper 10-12 minutes per shaft to cut .025 cleanly.
CNC does it a 5th of that easily.
Manual machine or CNC is immaterial. It only takes a little over 4 minutes to make a pass so you don't have much time to get much else done in between loading and unloading. I've got 2 manual saw shaft machines but only use one. I can do some little stuff in between loadings as the machine stops at the end of a pass but I still make approximately 3000 passes a year between my cues and shafts. I'm in the process of building a 5 station machine now. Like I had said earlier, It doesn't take long to just make one finish pass but 1000s of passes add up.
Dick
The machine I use is a saw shaft machine and cuts very smoothly. A pass on mine is 4 min and 10 seconds. I've talked about it before so I wont go into detail now.
Dick
RBC
Deceased
You are really on to something here. Most people just can't imagine the time savings being able to cut 4 pieces at a time. Yes, our multi-head machine doesn't hold really tight tolerances, but it cuts a tremendous amount of time in all the turning before the finish pass.
If anyone is building a multi-head machine make sure to make each head stock and each tail stock individually adjustable for the diameter of your part. This is the area that is hard to keep consistent. Also, you will need to have your saw blades all cut to the exact same size, and you want them to fit the spindle very tight so you don't have runout there.
I also use a stepper motor to drive my spindle rotation. I just run a toothed belt around all the pulleys. Mach can output a pulse stream for spindle rotation. This allows you to customize the shaft rotation speed with key strokes.
I actually have an idea for a 12 spindle machine. It would only cut 6 at a time, but would allow you to reload 6 while it is cutting 6. Basically, the machine would be in wood almost all the time with a looped cutting cycle. It think it could make some real sawdust!
Oh Yea, don't forget about dust collection! A multi-blade machine will make a tremendous amount of very fine dust. The kind that you don't want to breath! We use a clear vue cyclone and it is the nuts!
http://www.clearvuecyclones.com/
Royce Bunnell
www.obcues.com