Longworth chucks - cutting today vs. a year ago

[David Falkner]

I have greatly improved not only the process but the speed at cutting Longworth chucks so I thought I'd do another video. When I first cut these chucks they were taking about 16 minutes per disc followed by 5 minutes or more per disc of hand sanding the edges to clean off the tabs and to round the edge. Occasionally the Baltic Birch would chip where I cut a tab and that was frustrating.

Anyway, it's now a fairly refined and efficient process for a small home workshop. It could be improved upon but for now it's working just fine. The tools for the entire process are circular saw to break down the BB, table saw, drill press, CNC, stationary belt sander, drum sander, and ROS.

Here's the video -


Enjoy!
David

[Mark Bolton]

Cant beat that for an increase in production. The only small things that poke out would only shave seconds off your process. Second pass each vector as opposed to a complete second pass is far faster than running one entire roughing pass then rapid back and run and entire finish pass. Your corner rounding high speed gyroscope on the sander seems far faster than any router/router table option so if it works for you your smoking.

When I hear that high pitched squealing/screaming from your compression bit it screams to me of too small a tool (shank) or too long a tool. Geometry sets the diameter but I tend to look for a much lower tone when we are cutting. The lower the tone, usually the higher the speed, cleaner the cut, longer tool life, faster parts. The size of your scroll's in the chuck will fix your options but it may be worth looking into a different tool now that your single passing. My previous post about bigger shanks with small diameter tools may be worth a try. There really isnt a need for a compression a lot of times even though its the standard now. Might be worth a cutter for a test run.

Completely understood that in this CNC world you start chasing minutes, then seconds, then tenths of seconds, and probably none of us are moving enough product to see the value in the tenths of seconds. But on a few hundred parts, it adds up.

I tend to find myself trying to find a balance between cleanup of the parts. Chip extraction. And production. When you factor in picking up a single bit of sawdust, or having to even hand sand the part in the least, slowing down the machine makes a bit more sense. That said, these things are thoroughbreds and they thrive on being pushed hard.

Nice work.