I need to make cylinders of various sizes out of wood, And I am looking for a fast way to do this with a good surface finish. The cylinders would be from 6" down to 1" in diameter and from 4" to 24" long. I am using a variety of woods, but mostly Hard maple and Cherry
I have a 4th axis. I tried using a 1" flat bottom bit and rotating the blank. This made a nice cylinder but the surface didn't look great. So I tried putting a flap sander in that is designed for CNC machines. This made the surface nice and smooth but there was some burning left on the surface, due to the high speed. But it took about 7 min for the whole process.
I next tried running a long bit along the length of the side of the cylinder, doing this and rotating the blank 1 degree at a time left a nice finish and a nice look but it took 7.6 seconds for 1 pass along a 6" cylinder, it took 45 min to complete. Way to long. This was at a feed rate of 200, I could probably go faster but not much, and trim off a few min.
How can I get a nice smooth surface that looks good and feels good to the touch. Is there some sort of Jig or fixture I can make?
My machine capacity is: 32"x40"x6.52"