Turner’s cubes, such as this small example, were traditionally made by apprentice centre lathe turners to demonstrate their skills or mastery of their machine and trade.
I am not clever enough to make one of these with a lathe but with a CNC controlled milling machine, for me, it becomes possible. This was made using just two short GCode programs generated by the Mach3 wizards – the first was ‘Circular Pocket’ using a 4mm slot drill to mill a pocket into each of the 6 faces and the second was ‘Cut Circle’ using a 10mm dovetail cutter to cut each recess (undercut) and free the central cube. A little bit of polishing (to remove the machine marks) and it was done.
Controversial perhaps, but something this exercise has shown me is that, in the fullness of time, CNC programming skills will replace the traditional engineering trade skills for almost all manufactured items. Is this a good thing or a bad thing ??
One thing I forgot to mention in the above posting is that if you are thinking of making one of these then you have to make quite a few. Just about all of my friends who have seen this all want one for themselves.
Tweakie. Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
tweakie, nice work! I don't think it's a bad thing that new methods replace the old ones. The old ones were replace older ones, so sometimes it seems a bit sad, that old things are disappear, but it's the order. All we can do is to keep in mind that we can do many things without the latest technology. H1i.hu