I would like to put intricate designs (such as words or pictures) onto round objects. Has anyone made such a CNC machine yet?
I don't know if what I want to do is still considered a lathe or not, anyone?

You might be able to get more information over at http://www.cnczone.com
I only wish I had the space for things like this. Apartment life sucks!

Are you saying round like spherical or cylindrical? If cylindrical, you would need a 4 axis mill or live tool lathe, if spherical you would need a 5 axis mill or yet again a very special live tool lathe.

I have made a small one. It works good but it is slow. I have parts for a couple more. One for me and one for my dad. I hope to write the software for it too.

However, I just moved so I have to rebuild my projector for a different size room first.

I want to be able to put a complex image onto the side of a large dowel.
Is their a special name for this? Or is it a 4 axis lathe?

What is a "live tool lathe"?

You can use a 4 axis mill, which is a cnc router (mill) with a 4th axis indexer added.

A live tool lathe is a lathe that has tools that your tool turret can actually spin, like say an endmill, so you would lock your spindle and use the "live tool" in the turret to cut a design.

But a live tool lathe like that in not a cheap option.




Yup what joe said, since you want to do large cylindrical dowel you could just use 4 axis mill/CNC router.

What software do you use to get G-code from a model for a 4th axis?

CNC-Toolkit is one i can think of, i'm sure there are others.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CNC_Toolkit/

http://www.rainnea.com/cnc_toolkit.htm

down load the latest MSE file (in the files section on the yahoo group), it runs inside of GMax.

http://www.turbosquid.com/gmax

Joe