4th Axis CNC

I wanted the ability to turn nosecones and other items on my CNC machine. I was able to 3D carve half of a cone and other half and glue them together to make a plug, but it was difficult to guarantee one side wasn't a little thicker than the other. I've wanted to add a 4th axis to my router since I built it so I've started. I figure this is as good a place as any to post my progress.

Original design:


Drive shaft after machining:


Parts starting to arrive:


Cutting motor mount:
[YOUTUBE]FzgMH2ss9gs[/YOUTUBE]

Finished motor mount:

Parts attached to the motor mount plate:


Gear reduction (3.5:1):


Set screws on standard 6" aluminum lathe face plate:
(3/4x16 threaded drive shaft will also accept lathe chucks)

looks great! How much "Z" travel does your router have? Or is this going to mount below the normal surface of the table?

I've got between 4 and 5" of Z axis travel. I plan on mounting the rotary axis level with the table surface. That should give me close to a 10" diameter max in one piece (more than enough for my needs).

Darn. I thought you were talking about adding a fourth dimension to the standard Minkowski Continuum which would make spacetime, and a machine to build rockets in the future.

Never mind

alexzogh said:

Darn. I thought you were talking about adding a fourth dimension to the standard Minkowski Continuum which would make spacetime, and a machine to build rockets in the future.

Never mind

Click to expand...

Hopefully, the rockets I could design now would be ancient technology in the future. High power guys would be making fun of my chemically propelled "toy."

Tonight I made room for the upgrade. I had to remove all of the T-track and write some g-code to cut the front 15" off of the table. (It always makes me happy when you can use the tool to upgrade itself.)

My plan is to make the 4th axis parts be retractable so I can re-install a removable top when I need to use all 5' of Y-axis travel.

Here it is with the T-track and bolts removed:


Here's how it is sitting now:

I got it running on its own power tonight! Now I just need to finish the base it will sit in and mount it under the table.

[YOUTUBE]1Xaj2PJ0Dz4[/YOUTUBE]

I had to order a larger stepper and add an additional controller to the machine. Here is the first test cut:

[video=youtube;5jHZCl9plRM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jHZCl9plRM[/video]

It's not very efficient, but I wrote the gcode by hand pretty quickly. Once I'm done cutting Christmas presents, I think I'll write an app to turn nosecones directly from RockSim files.

Nosecones! Cutting in foam right now for testing.

[YOUTUBE]7TVkCSLoats[/YOUTUBE]

The g-code for this part was generated directly from a rocksim file. It will need to be rewritten, but learned a lot writing it - which was the point.