Setting up for production turning....

[Doug Rasmussen]

A little proof of concept today. The goal is to rapidly produce quality small turnings.

A 4" diameter piece of badly checked holly was the test piece.

First operation is to make a 1" holding tenon on one end. Blank was held upright in the vise on a milling machine. the spinning cutter moves in a circular path removing excess material to leave a 1" tenon.

The tenon-ed blank is next held in a rotating headstock's collet with the cutter following the contour path. The picture shows the finish pass after a roughing cut to remove the bulk of material.

Last picture shows the blank after the outside is finished and a tenon is left to hold for the inside turning. Maybe tomorrow for the inside cutting.

So far, about 2 minutes actual cutting time.

[Tom Wilson66]

Just a quick question: would it be better to leave off the first tenon and drill a hole for a screw chuck? This would save the wood used for the tenon, which could add up to a lot of wood in a production run.

[Doug Rasmussen]

Just a quick question: would it be better to leave off the first tenon and drill a hole for a screw chuck? This would save the wood used for the tenon, which could add up to a lot of wood in a production run.

Thanks for the reply.

Yep, you're absolutely right. I didn't have a screw available.

[Doug Rasmussen]

Adding detail to the turning......

The piece checked so much more overnight I didn't want to risk doing the inside turning so I tried adding pyrography to it.

The first picture shows the laser burning a design. It's a blue laser which is why the picture is blue.

The laser head is held like a cutter. It's about the same laser Rockler and others offer for their CNC routers, about 3 watts..

Second pic is the finished burn. This was a design I already had in the computer. Usually I would have smaller detail for this size piece so as not to overwhelm the turning with an accent feature.

The extraneous spots and short lines are from fiddling around focusing the laser. The power was set to produce a .040" wide line.