Posted on 10/19/2011 5:50:54 AM PDT by SWAMPSNIPER
This is cool!
Definitely cool. I wonder what motion the chuck has to travel through to get the tip of the triangular cutter to folllow the square path. The sound of the milling machine doesn’t sound too good; I’m guessing due to the mechanism creating that odd motion.
It looks like chip ejection will be a problem with deep holes as there are no spiral flutes on the cutter.
Seems to be best suited for shallow, blind square holes.
The machine does not rotate on a single axis so it is not a drill in the regular sense. It is more like a mill than a drill or a combination of the two.
Neat! I wonder if it would work without a pilot hole.
It doesn’t look like it would.
It’s called a Watts drill... you can buy them in the US and drill your own square holes....
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/10/drilling-square-holes-with-a-watts.html
Sort of looks like the “piston” (rotor?) in a wankel engine.
It was patented in 1918 - now that was a clever AMERICAN fellow.
http://books.google.com/patents?id=mPJcAAAAEBAJ&zoom=4&pg=PA49#v=onepage&q&f=false
It’s old news, and not even a clever Chinese invention...:^)
I am much relieved to know that American ingenuity still shines forth!
Not in a blind hole, nor a through hole that prevents the broach from passing all the way through (a hole thru a pipe wall from od to id).
Regards,
GtG
No, it's more like a single point shaper or planer cutter (metal not wood). The process is similar to hobbing a gear tooth profile, although the tool path motion is generated by an eccentric gear arrangement similar to the rotor of a Wankel engine. Of course the cutter drive uses a different ratio and eccentricity to generate a square rather then the "bean" shaped contour of the Wankel combustion chamber.
Regards,
GtG
I'm betting they looked something like this, eh?:
“I wonder what motion the chuck has to travel through to get the tip of the triangular cutter to folllow the square path.”
See my reply #49. If the tip is based on a reuleaux triangle, like I suspect, it should take only a simple circular path to trace out a square.
Hadn’t heard of that geometrical shape before. In your animation, it doesn’t quite make it to the corners. How would they address that?
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