Can you make a curved slot using a DRO?

[aliva]

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[BladesIIB]

If critical accuracy is not important you can make a sharpie line between your two holes and free hand slowly turning both x and y feeds together. My guess is that it will be almost as smooth as manually turning to a bunch of calculated points.

 

[Shootymacshootface]

If critical accuracy is not important you can make a sharpie li e between your two holes and free hand slowly turning both x and y feeds together. My guess is that it will be almost as smooth as manually turning to a bunch of calculated points.

Thats what I do. I call it etch-a-sketch. The more you do it, the better you get at it. The trick is to do it with no distractions, and go super slow, so that any wrong moves made will be negligible.

 

[Suzuki4evr]

G

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Gr8 thanks.

 

[Reddinr]

You could also NOT use a DRO to do it.

If there is room on the plate to put a hole at the center of radius of the slot you could make a fixed "axle" around which the plate can be rotated.
Position first hole then clamp-drill/mill-rotate a bit, repeat... Then file as needed.

 

[Suzuki4evr]

You could also NOT use a DRO to do it.

If there is room on the plate to put a hole at the center of radius of the slot you could make a fixed "axle" around which the plate can be rotated.
Position first hole then clamp-drill/mill-rotate a bit, repeat... Then file as needed.

Yes that is one way to do it, but unfortunately the plate has a big section in the middle thats been cut out already. But that is a good method to do it if you don't have a big enough rotary table and the plate is still whole. Thanks for the input Reddinr.

 

[Suzuki4evr]

There, I can attach files again. As you can see.....BIG WHOLE.

 

[Suzuki4evr]

Ye ye I see the out of place collet

 

[BladesIIB]

Seeing the pic, I would definitely mill freehand and file.

 

[BGHansen]

+1 on BladesIIB comment. Not much sweep there. I'd use a French curve or freehand a line with Dykem and mill to the line.

Bruce