Thread: Looking for ideas

You can certainly do both. Comes down to cost and programming skill if you want to use 4th axis for rotation. There is also a technique using locating pins where you manually rotate the workpiece 180 and can cut out the second half with a 3 axis machine.

I'd have a go making the two halves and gluing them together rather than try to do it as a single piece.

Originally Posted by riverbuilder

I’m looking at building some fishing lures for someone, they’re timber, elliptically shaped, almost like a sardine in shape. I was wondering if it’s possible to shape them on a 3 axis CNC machine, but being oval shaped, is there a way they could be mounted between centres? Perhaps with a motorised rotating unit to turn them? Any ideas would be great. Thanks.

Depends on how much you want to spend and how many you want to make.

Do the lures really have to be made from wood -- or is wood preferred because it is easy to shape.

Injection moulded plastic would be the cheapest -- but you might need to "make" several thousand lures to break even.

3-D printing would be my next suggestion -- but the client would need to accept that the lures were made from plastic.

CNC is an option, Axion have a 4th axis option for their 3-axis CNC machines. ARK360 - Axiom 4th-Axis Rotary Kit
Provided the lures are mirror images (port side of each is the same shape as the starboard side) you could readily make up a 180 degree indexing head for your existing 3-axis CNC. Once you had the file sorted, you could make up a batch of lures by stringing them out along a single rod.