How to Program A Woodturning Project for CNC Wood Lathe

CNC wood lathe is one of EagleTec's most popular cnc machines, which are always applied in the production of stair parts balustrade, table and chair legs, Roman columns, and baseball bats. It is a cnc lathe that can do woodturning jobs fast. The average time to complete a woodturning project is about 1 minute only. As the control is CNC, in order to process various styles of columns, we must first program the woodturning project. In this course, we are going to see how to program a woodturning project for wood turning cnc machine. We believe that the course will be helpful to you. 

EagleTec CNC provides high-performance woodturning cnc with full solutions from hardware to software, if you are looking for a new lathe, please check out here. 

Woodturning Programming Principle Interpretation

EagleTec woodworking cnc lathe adopts a dedicated CNC controller. The advantage of this controller is that it can directly read ***.dxf files. Therefore, we use AutoCAD as programming software. To program a woodturning project, we only need to draw the corresponding drawings in the AutoCAD according to the actual production requirements. Then take the drawings directly to the wood lathe for machining, no need to create G-code toolpath anymore. In this way, it is pretty easy for a beginner to learn how to program a woodturning project. 

Let's take a look at how to program step by step.

Suppose our woodturning blank is in a square shape with size 60x60x150mm, the side length of the square is 60mm, by calculation, we can get the length of the diagonal line is 84.85mm. This is based on mathematical common sense, the diagonal of the square is 1.414 times the side length. (60x1.414=84.85mm) Please refer to the diagram below.

Common Sense About How to Program A Woodturning Project for CNC Wood Lathe

Woodturning job is symmetrical on both sides, we only need to make programming for the left half which is from the central line to the left side. So, our design should be created in the space between the left boundary and the central line. The corresponding dimension of this area is half of the diagonal, that is, 42mm, and the maximum cut depth must be less than 42mm, otherwise, the woodturning blank will be break. Please refer to the below drawing to understand better.

Key Points of Woodturning Project Programming

Just look at the left half of the drawing above, and please try to understand the points below.

• The white part which is close to the left boundary line is the part need to be cut off by the machine.

• The shadow part which is close to the central line is the part to be retained.

• The block red line is the trace (path) of the woodturning tool (chisel).

• 42mm is the half size of the diagonal line. 

• 18mm is the depth of the first cut and last cut. (this size should be determined as per your requirement)

• 100mm is the total length of the design. (this size should be determined as per your requirement, and it should be less than the wood blank length)

• Photo on the right side is the actual finished job from the left side drawing. 

Instructions Step by Step about How to Program a Woodturning Project

Step 1. Draw the Top and Right Borders of The Workpiece

In AutoCAD software, select the line, active the orthogonal mode, draw two lines that are perpendicular to each other as shown by the following diagram.

Step 2. Draw the Left Border of The Workpiece

Select the line in the vertical direction, click the offset, input value 42mm, press Enter, and click on the left side of the vertical line to generate the offset line. The new line here is the left boundary line of the workpiece. 

Step 3. Draw the End of The Workpiece

Select the line in the horizontal direction, click the offset, input 100mm, press Enter, and click on the upper side of the line to generate the offset line. The new line here is the end of the design pattern. How long you need turning, enter the appropriate value. For example, you want to turn 100mm long, then input 100 here. Until now, we have determined the 4 boundaries of the woodturning design. The design will be drawn within the four boundaries, which is the space represented by the shaded portion of the image below.

Step 4. Program the Pattern

Draw patterns inside the 4 borders according to your needs.

Step 5. Set the Cutting Depth for Woodturning

Draw the bottom and top guidelines. (woodturning start and end)

Step 6. Delete Reference Lines

Delete all reference lines. Until now, the woodturning pattern is finished. But there is one step also.

Step 7. Set the Origin Point for Workpiece

Move the coordinate origin to the lower-left corner of our finished pattern drawing.

Step 8. Save the Pattern

Please save the finished drawing with extension name ***.dxf. Now, the programming file can be taken to the cnc wood turning lathe for machining. 

For better understand, please watch the detailed video tutorials below.

Hope you enjoy the course!

Relevant Course:

CNC Wood Lathe Hardware Tutorials Free Download

CNC Wood Lathe Programming Tutorials for Slot Broaching

Original Post from EagleTec CNC

Copyright: original works, for permission to reproduce, reprint, please be sure to indicate the form of hyperlinks to the original source of the article, author information, and this statement.