I bought a HF 7x10 mini lathe earlier this year and use it for all kinds of stuff. I cut everything from polyurethane to titanium on it and have had good results.
I'm an automotive machinist by trade, and i'm wanting to mess around with different shapes of valve heads that will work good with my porting... but to do this I realy need to convert to cnc. I will need to be able to do dynamic radii on the valve heads (starts out as a certain size radius and gradually changes to one of a different size in the same cut) and undercut the stems at the head. No way I'm going to be able to do this manually. Take a look at this picture of a valve and you will see what I'm talking about. the plan is to use a section of delrin rod to make a valve with test profiles and see how they react on the flowbench, and once I have found my ideal profile start to cut them into actual valve blanks to build the heads with.
I am apt enough to get the mechanical part of my cnc conversion down, but I'm pretty much clueless as to the electrical/control part of it. I've been reading these forums for a few weeks and have picked up alot of good info, but am still too "green" to really go anywhere with it. I don't know what my ideal setup would need. I need it to be robust enough to machine stainless and titanium and the like. I've got a ballscrew setup laid out for the Z and X axis.
I'm having trouble completely grasping the meaning of the following: steppers, servos, dual shaft, bipolar, gecko, timing belt vs. direct drive, among others. My learning curve is steep once I get the basics figured out, but the basics are where I am having problems.
Basically, what kind of motors, drive, and control do I need ?
Thanks for any advice/help.