I came upon the Delph site and was excited at the possibility to cut clock wheels on the Tormach PCNC440 as this was one of my prime motivations for the purchase. Does anyone love crossing out wheels ?
Delph has been feeding me with updates to their code and it is starting to make sense what it is doing and I like it. Today I have run a wheel on slightly hybrid code (Delph plus my direct G Code hacks) and I am impressed so far.
The Delph code lets you design all manner of wheels for clock and other applications. You can define the style of the teeth, the crossings etc and you can drill or mill arrays of holes. You can also define the order of the machining processes. I bolted down a square of brass with corner holes holding it down – you can see the holes in the MDF below. Next I had the Tormach PCNC440 drill the three sets of holes in the blank, then cut the blank to circular size to match the teeth maximum diameter. In the picture the mill is cutting a rough cut first pass on the teeth using a 0.7mm carbide cutter. Next is the tooth fine second cut and then I can cut out the crossings which is what the five screws are for – holding down the petals that will become free once profiled.
It is all in 2.5 D but well worth a look.
http://www.delphelectronics.co.uk
Update : –
All went well in the first rough pass on the teeth called a Gash Cut in the software. I was running at 4000 RPM and 5mm per minute and each tooth was taking 4 minutes with a slow 3mm lead in. The second finishing pass was much quicker and now only leaves the crossing out to run. As each petal of the crossing out is cut free , the screws shown above will keep the petal segments in place so there is no damage to the tooling. I have made some small clamps on the 3D printer to put around the outside of the teeth to keep the wheel in place and centre screw to hold once the petals are cut free.
What a feeling to complete it and thanks to Delph for their support in getting me there.
See some more details and screen shots here.
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