4th axis question

[SawdustandSmoke]

Hello I am making something somewhat similar to the seahorse corbel, problem is the material cups away from each other as its being carved due to the amount of material removed. Right now I can make them in hard maple only because it is the most stable. Will gluing two boards together first and then carving them with a 4th axis solve the problem?? or will it cause it to curl up in some other way.

Also will any other the aspire helpers like wrapper work on 3d models this way?

My plan is to get a china harmonic drive but I don't want to spend the cash on it if it will not work.

[dealguy11]

Two different issues. If the problem is the boards warping and cupping, then laminating them together might help with that if you make sure the growth rings go in different directions. A 4th axis won't make much difference for that problem as the issue has to do with stresses being relieved in the wood, not how it's being held.

It may or may not be possible to unwrap your model and have it cut using Aspire's unwrap feature. It depends on the shape and whether the center line of the part is exposed at any point in the model. If it is, then unwrapping it won't work very well.

[SawdustandSmoke]

Thanks for the information, Just out of curiosity, I have seen some machines that cut on one side and flip 4 times, I have seen other machines that rotate the piece very fast and cut like a lathe, and I have seen other that travel up and down the length of the part while rotating the piece back and forth, do the third party addon's work in any of these ways or are they limited to one method?

I am hoping that cutting on both sides equally will help the tension.

[mezalick]

Cut strips of wood ( 1” x 1” ) and alternate the grain direction then glue together..
With some wood you can’t easily see the difference.
Michael

[garylmast]

I don't recommend gluing cross-grain. When I did it making a steering wheel, the results turned out ugly, where I ended up making another with the grain going the same way. In the attached video link, I glued up several 2 x 6's or 2 x 8" and used the 4-axis.

http://vid1161.photobucket.com/albums/q ... c_0025.mp4

[dealguy11]

Aspire can do many of the machining methods you mention, though some of them require a little bit of manual intervention to make them work. If your doing flat indexing on both sides of the part, then you have to manually insert the commands to flip the part. I understand Cut 3d will allow you to set up this kind of indexing within the program, but you can't do any design with it. If you make this as an unwrapped model, then Aspire can cut either along the length of the part or around it.