I have seen posts on here about adding a 4th axis and it always seems difficult to impossible. I make a lot of legs for chairs and tables and most of them are round and tapered, so I spend a lot of boring time at the lathe. What if, for this purpose, I attached a 4th Axis that isn’t connected, electronically, to my machine at all. I could run it at a set RPM just like I do my lathe, and zero the cutter on the center of the tail stock. I could make a tool path that simply travels along the X axis and the Z moved down as it goes to create the taper.
Sound like it would work? Anyone have any thoughts? Is this crazy?
Thanks!