Gear cutting
I thought I should note down an idea I had a few days ago before I forget. The turntable platform will have precise control of it's angle, so it would make for an ideal gear cutting tool. If a blank made of plastic or metal was mounted on a support above the centre of the turntable, a simple cutting tool could be used to produce custom gears. The cutting tool could just be on an adjustable up/down pivot and hand operated. The computer would set the angle, then you'd just swing the cutter up and down and proceed to the next tooth.

This might be particularly useful, for example, to produce bevel gears for the extruder and using only simple radial gears to construct the turntable.

Custom gear cutting would also make it plausible to construct a gear that can mesh with a worm gear that is made from threaded steel rod. It would need to be made of steel and have small teeth, but that might be one easy way to get worm gearing. Perhaps the larger pitch coach screws could even be used (?).

Of course, this could all potentially be automated in the future too, but I'm just thinking of construction of a basic machine for now.
- posted by Simon McAuliffe @ 07:54