Good morning.

[Mad Gnome]

Good afternoon John S,

My Name is John middleton, I was named Black Gnome when I was a long haired, bearded, thing...many, many, years ago whilst employed as a sound recording engineer. These days no hair, grey beard = Mad Gnome.

Thanks for suggesting Cut3D from Vectric, it looks like the sort of program that would work for me. I have also taken a look at Mach3, and I have to admit that I haven't a clue where it starts from. Do you have any idea what sort of interface will work with Cut3D? Do the ex educational machines such as Denford Novamills, Boxford 190's, or the Conect series have the brains to talk to a modern program, or is it only the much later models that will speak to the modern programs?

I had a long look at a Roland MDX-40 which was being employed to cut wax patterns for jewellery, the finished items were very good, but the machine is not minded to cut any sort of metals.

One of my wishes for model car building is to be able to produce a spoked wheel rim with all the pips where you drill for the spokes, also I have never been able to produce a full original tread pattern that I am happy with. A 4-axis system would enable such items to be produced. In the past although the wheels that I made were individually spoked the rims were plain, and the tyre patterns were very awkward because I used a perspex blank and cut the tread using my rotary table, and 1/32" mills which frequently expired.

If you have any thoughts on this I would be most grateful.

Gnome.

[John S]

Taking it from the beginning you need CAD, then CAM, then a controller for a CNC machine.
Cad you know about, CAM is a program like Cut3D which turns the drawing into G code which is just a text file containing way points, go to xx go to yy etc.
The controller in 95% of home shop cases, Mach 3, then reads this and tells the machine where to move. Very simple explanation.

The Denfords, Boxfords, Connect series will talk to Mach once the electronics on board have been upgraded.

Can't really advise you on the models as that's not my field but I would have thought a wheel rim would be better turned to shape and then the spoke placements punched in using a small lever punch and a couple of dies in relation to a 4th axis or dividing head for the indexing.

With tyres and Cut3D it would be possible to make a 1/2 mould and with the matching half mould these from a rubber material. I saw an article some while ago that did just this.