The easiest is probably the picture of the ring template, It allows you to cut rings very easily from flat stock if need be. As You can see in the picture I simply glued a couple of rings down to a strip of birch. It's easy enough to to cut the rings to size just By using a endmill and stylus of the same diameter. You can see the circles, those are middles of the ivory rings, and even those can be used on the ends of joint caps.
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Greg, what you wrote reminded me of when I used a Deckel copy diesinking mill . There was a book with different styli and cutters to get the sizes that were required.
As is as 3d, the ball shape of the cutter and stylis effected the outcome.Also had other pantograph machines that had adjustable ratio's in the x and y plane. This was to compensate for differential shrinkage in a moulding.Hence having a single lip cutter grinder or D bit grinder became invaluable.
For the OP.
Great that you are researching the market before plowing in head 1st.
I am sure you are aware of tuning the sizes with stylis to cutter ratio etc.
Some important aspects is rigidity of the setup,the piece being cut, and securing the template. Of course there will always be the ability of the person setting up and using the setup as well.
The little things that make a decent copy/panto is how concentric the stylis is to the cl of the holder, along with the snugness of the bearing/bushed arm/arms. I like panto's with scaling , but are alot more involved in their manufacture.
It's similar to a copying mill, I mean, I suppose in reality It is, but the z keeps It pretty much fixed other then being able to manually change the depth, so It's not setup for 3D. I can think of a few ways It may could be modified for it, although changing the ratio I'm not sure how to go about something like that.
Mine differs quite a bit from the OP's machine, although some of the principles are the same.
I have seen units very similar to his being used By wood carvers to rough out 3D sculptures. Please pardon the expression, but kind of a poor man's rendition of a copy machine if you will. Some of the uses were roughing out things like gun stocks, or duck decoys, pretty much any 3d shape that a carver may want to duplicate. they usually just serve to get the material to a basic shape and then the rest of the work is often done by hand. It just saves them from a lot of prep work drawing lines and cutting chunks of waste away. Most of them work on the same basic principles. I have seen nicer looking commercial versions of the machines that are geared toward the carving industry as well. Here's one example-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7OH-Q2Vl6Y&feature=related. Here's a version that does 2 at a time-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqUtlIP81rI&feature=related those 2 seem to do a pretty nice job, not as rough as some I have seen. I think most of Your die mills or copiers used for making molds would be a little more involved & precise type of machinery. The principles are similar though. Of coarse now days with CNC a lot of these machines are becoming obsolete except to a small percentage of the hobbyists perhaps.
Here's an an example of one of the low cost homemade guitar inlay machines that I mentioned in a previous post.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Qad45qXc3Y
Your are correct about the stylus being concentric, the smallest differences can make a big difference. Also about the tuning on the stylus with the bit, as well as the template for that matter. I could remake a plate several times before I get one that I'm happy with. There have been some cases where due to the type of shape It wasn't even worth the effort because getting a working design would be near impossible with a 1 to 1 machine. Also as can be seen Mine works with a dremel as well as several commercially available models. With a dremel you really want to keep an eye out for run out at the bit. I use a keyless chuck in Mine, so I may have to re chuck several times until I get It close enough for My Liking. otherwise It will effect the size and fit of your parts.
I would recommend buying one like Chris sells to anyone thinking of doing It, Mainly because he already has many of the hurdles one may come across already worked out in his machine. Doing It now, knowing what I have learned, it would be much easier, but at the time I started, even with a basic idea of a design to go on It still took me much time, effort, experimentation, and tuning to get it up to speed. It works for me, but There are still several upgrades I would like to do. Upgrading the spindle is one of them. It gets Me by though.
Oh one other recommendation for the OP always mark the orientation of your male parts, so that you can easily put them in the female part the correct way, and not reverse them. Although they may look perfectly dimensioned, very rarely will a hand made template be exact. Since a CNC tool-path is made from a drawing I would imagine some of those may be reliant on the drawing Itself, Therefore theoretically could be subject to a similar situation in some cases. not all mind you , but some. Eitherway better safe then sorry.
