As the German pipemakers thread is digressing somewhat am starting a seperate one as it seems to be an interesting subject worthy of its own thread
fromTompipes:
Not sure but I can think of 5 offhand.
The price of a decent CNC lathe is about the cost of a full set of pipes so if you could increase your out put by the worth of a full set over a few years it would pay for itself.
Not sure but I can think of 5 offhand - can they be named e.g. Hevia ?
How long would it realistically take a maker to recover the cost of one of these cnc lathes as it would only do the basic turning which appears to be just a small part of the job. It can’t stitch bags, make bellows, form tapered ferrules, make keywork and fit them etc. etc.
Can a set of pipes part made by cnc still be claimed to be totally a hand made instrument ?
How long would it realistically take a maker to recover the cost of one of these cnc lathes as it would only do the basic turning which appears to be just a small part of the job. It can’t stitch bags, make bellows, form tapered ferrules, make keywork and fit them etc. etc.
You’d save a lot of time rough turning wood. Mounts can be finicky to make so you’d save a lot of time there and with milling attachments you could cut keys too. At a guess, a very rough guess, you might be able to increase your output by as much as a full set a year.
You could save a huge amount of time making reamers too.
Can a set of pipes part made by cnc still be claimed to be totally a hand made instrument ?
“Hand-made” is a difficult term to quantify. Can you say a chanter is hand made when you need a lathe and drill press to make it?
A computer controlled lathe still needs a skilled craftsmen to programme it. Put me in control of one and i’m sure the only thing I’d turn out is pretty looking fire wood.
A lathe, computer controlled or otherwise, is still just a tool.
A computer controlled lathe still needs a skilled craftsmen to programme it. Put me in control of one and i’m sure the only thing I’d turn out is pretty looking fire wood.
I think that’s a really good point. By the time you buy the machine, set it up, learn how to use it, get your design right and everything else, you probably could have gotten pretty good at doing it by hand. Its one of those situations where the labor saving device may end up making things more complicated. In my corner of the instrument making world (violins), some folks have been using pattern carvers and CNC machines to do basic gouging of tops and backs and to rough out scrolls, and then do the fine carving by hand. If that works for you and makes you more productive, I say go for it. To me learning to use the damn machine would be more work than its worth.
I have a couple of CNC machines in my (mostly) Northumbrian pipes workshop. I have a Denford Orac lathe and a Denford Triac milling machine. Both are extremely useful but the time taken to get started in this field should not be under-estimated. I have had to learn the basics of AutoCad-style technical drawing, and how to use the CAM program which generates the code actually used to control the machines (’ G Code’). I have also had to learn about G code itself, as well as the quite complex machine control software. I have not found any of this particularly easy, and it’s hard to find the time when an hour attempting to learn is an hour not making pipes.
Software at the right level is hard to track down, industrial software is very expensive- much dearer than the machines themselves- and any support available is aimed at someone working full time on programming in an industrial environment (fair enough, but not what pipemakers do).
That said, the lathe is great for small batches of (obviously) identical blanks and it is much quieter than my rattly old Boxford. The milling machine is good for the complex Northumbrian chanters, and I also make the bellows cheeks on it, including all the stitch holes.
I haven’t actually saved much time on this yet but I hope to one day!
The lathe will be good for UP reamers since it can be programmed with the data from the original bore measurements and once set off will do all the turning very accurately, repeated as many times as you like, much quicker than manual turning.
Tom, it appears to be a Chinese lathe with a retrofit control & stepper motors. It seems to be built with the home hobbyist in mind. I have never run or programmed one. Here’s a Practical Machinist forum thread featuring the owner/founder and chief design engineer of Microkinetics.
My gut feeling is that you’re probably better off continuing your work with a manual machine.
Real CNC lathes are ridiculously expensive to buy & fix, and require serious 3 phase power.
This looks like a small, light duty machine, of Chinese quality, with a control of unknown capability (does it even have a rough turning cycle?).
Bingo!!! Yes, indeed. In general, a CNC lathe with coolant & roughing & finishing cycles would be excellent for making non HSS reamers. I’m just not sure that this particular lathe in question would be up to the task.
I don’t know much about woodturning by hand, but I do know a bit about CNC Manufacturing. I can surmise that there are cases where the woodturner is faster and cases where CNC is faster. It depends on the rules of the race and, quite honestly, the definition of “faster.” But that is all pretty pedantic.
I think the tone of this thread is indicating that from the opinion of at least one maker who works with both CNC and Handturning, there are things where CNC can provide efficiency and accuracy and there are tasks for which CNC is not worth it. Good enough for me.
I remember seeing this picture posted on C&F around the time of Alain Froment’s passing.
I don’t know the story behind it, and the NPU URL no longer works, but it clearly shows a CNC mill & lathe in the background.
I think the photo above was taken in the hevia workshop.
Heres Alain in his own workshop with no CNC machines in sight. I’ve seen other photos of him turning mounts with formed toolbits in his Myford.
An engineer friend of mine, (who has probably forgotten much more about these sort of things than I will ever hope to know), tells me that in the forseeable future, (meaning someone’s been working on it & has likely already done it) objects will be 3D laser scanned, and the data sent directly to a lathe and replicated. He says now its a three step process, meaning they have to assemble the scan data, translate it into instructions that the lathe can handle, and then seperately programme the machine to reproduce it.
Wether or not he’s having me on I dont know but is seems a realistic proposition.
Good spot, Rory!
Here’s an image from ArPa’s website. Color & trim of the mill match, and block wall with a compressed air line running horizontally along it at the same height, match in both photos.
It’s ArPa’s Lagun machining center.
Pipemakers have got on without CNC for a long time and it isn’t necessary. While I was in Chris Bayley’s workshop he was working on his Boxford VSL and the only concession he made to computer technology was to use a Heidenhain DRO to accurately place toneholes, and mark the start and end points for key blocks. That being said he then proceeded to turn down the key blocks completely with a narrow skew chisel, ambidextrously. I asked him why he did not choose to use the form tools he had designed for this stage of operations and he said that he had been doing it this way for so long that it was faster for him, as he did not have to start and stop the lathe to change tools. He also said that frequent starts and stops would wear out your motor and capacitors faster, which would cost both time and money. There is a photo of his lathe on his website.
From the point of view of repeatability his other lathe (another Boxford) is fitted with a Curvilinear attachment (after Holtzapfel) which is used to make mounts.
I bought a DRO for my Myford, and it does make the job a lot faster.
On a desktop CNC (lathe, mill), like the very affordable Sherline system, turning cylinders, tapers, precision horizontal drilling, slotting, and cutting is relatively trivial. CNC variable taper boring and reaming is not at all trivial, and really would take some high end and costly gear, and a lot of R&D time to succeed at. There is a great deal of art and skill in the CAD design and CNC programming, which seems to get overlooked. I’d go so far to say that artful CNC programming that results in something other than, at worst, a trashed, or at best an unaesthetic workpeice is a rare (and valuable) skill. I’m convinced there really are savings for certain processes in CNC, but the investment in machinery and a new skill set is high. I think more makers adopt some form of CNC in their build process than let on. DRO is a good example, like Mike says. They just don’t talk about it much.
but is seems a realistic proposition.