johnsmachines

The decoration around the barrel is formed by a repeating pattern, which when milled, very cleverly forms 2 identical patterns.  One is excavated and one is the original barrel surface.  You will see what I mean if you look at the pictures in the earlier blog, and the video below.

It took me an evening of experimenting on the computer to work out the system and draw it.

bombard-pattern3

Then I measured the diameters of the 2 gun components, calculated the circumference, (OK it is not rocket science.   3.142 times diameter), then working out the number of identical shapes which would fit around the 2 different diameters, at the same size and spacing.   Amazingly, it took 18 shapes to fit almost exactly around the barrel, and 16 of identical size almost exactly around the breech.  the angular spacing was 20 degrees and 22.5 degrees.

Then the shape was imported into V-Carve Pro, and G codes were generated.

My CNC mill does not have a 4th axis, so I used a dividing head to move the workpiece at the precise angles.  See the setup in the video.  That meant that the pattern was engraved into 16 and 18 flat surfaces, rather than a continuous cylinder as on the original.

It worked very well.  There were minor compromises due to the shapes being milled with a fine end mill but when you look at the pics I hope that you will agree that it is effective.

I calculated that the milling had to be at a maximum depth of 2mm in order to cope with the curvature, but if I do it again,  I would reduce the depth by 25%.

The first part of the video is a shot of CNC drilling.  Then the CNC routing of the repeating patterns.  Each angular setting of the pattern took 4 minutes to complete.  136 minutes altogether.  In reality, it took a whole day, most of which was spent doing the setups.