Hey.
I would like to ask some annoying questions, if I might…
I am going to try adding a rotary chuck to a shapeoko to engrave round stuff. Because the chuck elevates the work above the wasteboard by quite a bit (50 to 100 mm) this places the top surface of the work even higher. A 20 mm diameter cylinder mounted on a 75mm centre height chuck has its upper surface 85 mm above the wasteboard. It doesn’t take a large cylinder before its top is too high for the tool.
So, if you move the router as high in the mount as possible, use a short tool in the spindle, and move the router to its maximum Z coordinate, what is the clearance between tool tip and wasteboard? The gantry isn’t a problem, since I will be stealing the Y axis and using it to control the chuck. The router will only travel on X and Z.
Of course, all this assumes that the chuck is mounted to the wasteboard, but only time, money and imagination limit solutions to this. In theory, one could adapt the wasteboard to be movable relative to the gantry. This, however, would be a major engineering challenge I am not really up for. Lazy, I guess…
I told you this was going to be annoying. It is also important, since my goal is to do surface decoration on turned wooden objects. If it can’t handle much more than, say, a pen barrel (max 20 mm), then this experiment is not worth trying, especially since it is a very expensive one.
Thank you so much in advance for your help!
