Baseball Bat

[bdwigley]

I have a shark HD4 with the 4th axis. I use vcarve pro software. Has any one made a made a baseball bat with their machines? Or is it even possible? I've seen where other people have made round objects with their 4th axis so Im assuming a baseball bat is possible. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

[dealguy11]

The moulding toolpath will allow you to do this in VCarve Pro.

1. Use the Wrapped Job Setup gadget to set up your job. Make the part a little longer than you want the bat to be so that you don't hit the headstock or tailstock of your rotary device with the bit. In my example, I made the part 36 inches long to make a 32 inch bat.

2. Draw a vector that represents 1/2 of the cross section of the bat. I'm sure you can do better than this, but I was doing it fast. I put a straight piece on each end to hold it between the centers.

3. Draw a single vector near one end of the area, across the narrow dimension.

4. Use the single vector as the rail for the Moulding toolpath. Use the bat vector as the sweep. To make this go a bit faster, you can use a large bit for turning. I assumed a 1/2" ballnose. Don't forget to check the box to use a larger clearance tool to get rid of the extra material.

This is going to create a toolpath that goes around the part, rather than along its length.

[dealguy11]

I forgot to mention that you also need to turn it round before you start cutting the moulding toolpath. You can use the Create Rounding Toolpath gadget to create the toolpath for that.

[bdwigley]

Thanks for the reply I am still having trouble with it though.
1. I Created a rounding toolpath : my blank size is 4in. I checked optimized raster, cylinder length 40in. cylinder width 2.625in. (should the width be the finished product size?)
2. I drew a vector using the drawline/polyline tool of 1/2 the bat (it looks just like your picture)
3. What do you mean by draw a single vector near one end?
4. From there I followed you directions and it want let me create a moulding toolpath.
I know Im doing something wrong but I can't figure it out.
Thanks for any help that you might can provide.

[dealguy11]

1. Are you saying that you want the finished diameter of your bat blank to be 2.63"? If so, then the screen for the rounding toolpath should look something like this:

2. I probably misled you a little on this step. Since we want to leave a little cylinder at each end to hold the bat in the blank during carving, the height of the sweep vector needs to be less than the full radius of the bat by the radius of the cylinder at each end. So, if your bat is supposed to be 2.63" in diameter at the large end, and you want the cylinder holding it in place to be 1/2" in diameter, then the height of the sweep vector needs to be (2.63/2) - (0.5/2) = 1.065".

3. In the following picture, the drive rail vector is the one with the arrow pointing at it. Please note that on my machine the Y axis is the long axis, and X wraps around Y. If your machine goes the other way, then your vector will be vertical rather than horizontal.

4. Here is what the screen looks like when I create the moulding toolpath with the sizes from above. First, choose the drive rail vector from the last step. Then in the Moulding Toolpath screen, press the "Use Selection" button. Then, select the sweep vector (the bat shape). Choose your tools, name the toolpath, and press the "Calculate" button. You will see the direction of cut on the screen. If they're going the wrong way (that is, if they are going outside of the white area that denotes the project size) then right click on the drive rail vector to change its direction.

[bdwigley]

When I get to the modeling toolpath I go to make my bat the sweep selection and it says cut path exceeds thickness under the toolpath position. That prevents me from being able to click on the calculate button at the bottom.

[dealguy11]

What is the height of your sweep vector?

What is the material thickness in the Job Setup screen? If you set up your part right, the material thickness should be the radius of the part, and it has to be more than the height of the sweep vector.

[SteveNelson46]

I made the profile of this Louisville Slugger awhile back for a lathe duplicator. After seeing Dealguy's approach using a molding toolpath I decided to try my previously drawn shape with it. It seemed to work pretty good. I have never cut this on a CNC but the profile worked good on the lathe duplicator. Thanks for the lesson Dealguy.

[BobatHGC]

First post for me, be gentle---

I have recently purchased Vcarve to run a cnc lathe (x,y or x,z axes).
While I am familiar to cnc machines and other software programs that run them, I am struggling to create or simulate a job in Vcarve similar to this baseball bat.
Any advice or direction would greatly be appreciated.
Thanks!!

[SteveNelson46]

I used Aspire to save this as a V-Carve Pro file. Since I don't have VCP it is untested. I hope it helps.