So I got a little shop time in this evening and gave the rotary a try. After loading up the gcode I ran it through a dry run without any stock chucked up and things seems to be doing the right stuff in the right area. I have some old table legs I started on back when I was still single and I've had them around all these years. Decided one had the right dimensions for this project and made use of it.
The rounding tool path gadget was used to turn the square parts round. It starts with each of the corners and works on one corner at a time until each are round.
Then it starts cutting the the entire piece down to the largest diameter of the piece to be carved out.
Next was the roughing of the moulding tool path. The piece turns 360, the spindle shifts over, then turns -360 until the roughing is done.
On the final finishing pass, the ball mill works the same 360/-360 pattern for the length of the piece.
Here is the finished work, I'll chuck it up in my wood lathe for sanding and a few finish details, then part the end off.
I did have one small issue with stopping the job and restarting it. The bit drove right into the end of the bat as you can see above with the 1/4" hole. This is when I learned that my Spindle will send an estop if it gets overloaded, thankfully. I had it do it on one other job and wasn't quite sure why it had stopped, now I know and also need to maybe adjust those settings slightly.
Anyway, should make a nice little T-Ball bat for the grandson to use around the house (or maybe his Dad's house
).