Hi
Our research group have rather recently acquired a 5 axis CNC and we are now working on incorporating it into our research projects. We have a lot of engineers, but no machinists, so we are trying to figure out what is possible and what is not.
We have been using ball nose mills to indent substrates. All ball nose tools I have seen so far end in a hemisphere (except for a few 270 degree tool tips). What we like to have is a ball nose tool with a radius-of-curvature quite a bit larger than the tool cutting radius. For example a 0.4 mm diameter (0.2 mm radius) tool ending in a cutting radius-of-curvature of 0.6 mm. So instead of a hemisphere you would end up with a circle sector encompassing about 40 deg (or, if you want, a circle segment cut at the 0.4 mm chord attached to the end of a 0.4 mm tool) from a 1.2 mm in diameter sphere.
Have you seen anything like this? Would it be feasible to make and use?
We obviously assume that it would have to be custom made. Any ideas on companies that might be interested in doing such a thing?