Carving airplane propellers

Message: 3
Date: Fri, 06 Jun 2003 03:10:23 -0000
From: "trent2530" <TrentJordan25@...>
Subject: Todo: Routezilla

I am building John Kleinbauer's Routezilla II vertical mill. I
intend to use it to make wooden full-size airplane propellers. And
this is my first machine.

I intend to digitize an existing wooden propeller and have my
machine produce a copy. Or use a propeller program from Bates
Engineering to produce the numbers for nine airfoil sections that
are lofted together in a CAD program to create a file in 3D.

So, same 'ol question - which software would one of you recommend to
get from an existing propeller to one created by my mill? I think
CNC Pro will be used to move the stepper motors.

Thanks.

[I'd use a Microscribe digitizing arm and Rhino to transfer curves from the
existing propeller, if that was desirable, and produce the 3d surface. I'm
not familiar with the Bates program, but it is probably possible to use its
curves in Rhino instead. Once you have a 3d model, save it as an STL file.
This performs better across platforms than DXF, which has too many variants.
For writing the toolpaths, DeskProto, which has a "two-side wizard" to flip
the part over for carving the reverse side without losing registration,
would be a good choice.]

Andrew Werby
www.computersculpture.com