Titanium hub done between lathe and 4th axis

Oct 29, 2026 Last reply: 11 hours ago 3 Replies
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The hardest stretch of this build looks like the 4th axis work: cutting clean facets, recesses and tapped holes into titanium on a vertical mill is unforgiving going. The maker handled it by finishing the turning first, then carrying the part over to the mill with a rotary axis fitted, holding the workpiece in a threaded fixture nipped up with an Allen key. Getting a grip like that on a titanium hub seems like a sensible way to keep things rigid for rotary cutting.



The flow of the job reads nicely. The lathe work came first, and the part was completed during a second lathe operation before heading to the mill. Once there, the cutter formed the facets and recesses and tapped the holes. The finished head carries radial threaded ports and takes a removable conical jet nozzle, so the hub ends up doing a lot of work in one compact piece.



A few details stand out to me. The whole assembly includes a central spring-loaded brass ring mechanism, which is a pleasant contrast in both colour and material against the surrounding titanium. The finished hub is mounted to a thick braided steel cable, and after being set on an arbor the part was inspected before moving on. That sort of check between operations is worth copying.



The one open item is scale: the maker still has roughly 10 unique components to produce for this mostly titanium sculpture. That is a serious amount of remaining work, though the completed hub has already been assembled and shown off outdoors, which suggests the hardest chunk is behind them.


The clamping choice is what catches my eye. A threaded fixture tightened with an Allen key is about as simple as workholding gets, but for rotary cuts in titanium I reckon rigidity matters more than anything clever, and this looks like it delivers. The trade-off is that everything hangs on one clamp staying tight through the whole indexing cycle, which is a small risk for a big payoff.

Nice result. One thing I keep wondering: between the facets and the recesses, how did the maker handle indexing on the rotary axis? I am curious whether each feature was cut one at a time with manual repositioning, or whether the rotary axis ran a continuous programme. With titanium, the difference in cycle time between those two approaches has to be significant.

Since there are still around 10 unique components to make, my suggestion would be to rough out a spare jet nozzle blank while the current setup is still dialled in. Reworking a fixture later always costs more than cutting an extra part now, and given that the nozzle is removable anyway, having a backup on the shelf seems like cheap insurance for a sculpture this involved.

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