Quote:
Originally Posted by postino
I now use the compound rest for all my tapers. 
But I've mused about hooking up a motor & cog belt to run it. A 5" taper Luger barrel takes quite a bit of time; my cheapo motor doesn't have the grunt to take off more than .015" of steel at a time...  |
How much travel do you have in the compound? I can only run maybe 1 1/2" - 2" on mine, so it's not enough for any longer pieces, like barrels and such. Or do you cut it one section at a time?
I'm not sure if you can contol a motor precisely enough to cut tapers, seems like you need something pretty advanced to make the compound screw run perfectly syncronized with the lead screw. A stepper motor controlled by a reader on the lead screw would be one solution, but then you're pretty much half way to CNC. You could, of course, use a half nut, a change gear arrangement, a spider gear, cog belt etc to do it mechanically, but this would be an engineering nightmare.
And .015" doesn't sound too bad, I usually try and stay under .010" (using HSS cutters). I can cut more than that, but it will get pretty darn hot at the RPMs I like to use. I just love getting whipped by a hot wad of swarf when it gets wound up and thrown at me.
