4 Axis CNC Machining in 2021: The

Definitive Guide
This is my complete guide to 4 Axis CNC Machining in 2020.
In this brand new guide you’ll learn:
 Why to use a 4th Axis
 How a 4th Axis Works
 4 Axis CNC Workholding
 4 Axis for CNC Routers
 DIY 4th Axis
So if you’re thinking 4 Axis CNC might be for you, you’ll love this guide.
Let’s get started.

Contents

Chapter 1
Introduction to 4 Axis CNC

Chapter 2
 4 Axis CNC Workholding

Chapter 3
4 Axis CNC Programming: G-Codes

Chapter 4
How a 4th Axis Works

Chapter 5
4 Axis CNC Router Work
 Chapter 6
4th Axis Fixture Ideas

Chapter 7
DIY 4th Axis Design Notes
CHAPTER 1:
Introduction to 4 Axis CNC
4th Axis machining is an interesting and important sub-part of the CNC milling
world.  Haas actually got it’s start building a 4th axis before it ever built entire
CNC machines (pictured on the right).  This is an article series to help beginners
understand how and why a 4th Axis is used on CNC Mills.  In the first installment,
we’ll look at what a 4th axis is used for.  In the second, we’ll look at how they work.
If you’re new to CNC, your first impression may be that the 4th axis is used in the
same way a rotary table is used for manual machining.  Indeed, there are many
projects out there where someone converted a manual rotab to become a 4th axis.
While there is a grain of truth to this idea, largely it’s incorrect.
Most manual machining 4th axis work is about cutting features along an arc,
something that’s hard to do with a manual machine.  With CNC, cutting along an arc
is easy–that’s what the G02 and G03 g-codes are for.  There are cases where we do
continuous machining with a 4th axis–in other words, we want the cutter to be
machining as the 4th axis turns.  But there are also many other applications.
Let’s go over three major categories.
4th Axis Indexing for Access
First thing to talk about is this term “indexing”.  A 4th axis is typically either used in an
“indexing” mode or a “continuous” mode.  When indexing, no cutting happens until
the 4th axis is stopped (and often locked with a brake of some kind).  In fact, there
are some types which are called “indexers” that can only be used to index in fixed
degree increments rather than continuously rotating to any desired position.  By
contrast, “continuous” means that machining happens as the part is being rotated.
For example, to produce a cam lobe.
You may wonder why you’d ever want anything but continuous machining, but bear
with me–there are lots of useful ways to take advantage of indexing.  Also, you’ll
need much fancier CAM software to program continous machining.  It’s very
powerful, but plenty of work (perhaps even the majority of 4th axis work) is done
simply with indexing.
The most obvious case for indexing is to gain better access to the part.  Suppose
you’re making something complex, like a gear:
 Machining a gear with a 4th axis…
The 4th Axis indexes each tooth into position, stops, and then the cutter makes a
pass back and forth until the tooth is done.  They the next tooth is indexed into
position.
Gears are kind of an extreme case because it would be hard to imagine how to make
one if we couldn’t index the teeth.  But, there are much simpler cases where indexing
is also extremely helpful.  Suppose you have a part like a throttle body that has holes
on all sides.  You could build fixtures and do a bunch of setups, one for each side.
Or, you could also use a 4th axis to index the sides so more than one can be
machined with a single setup.
In a future article, we’ll get into programming 4th axis indexing.
 
4th Axis Indexing for More Parts
They say that Horizontal Machining Centers can be tremendously more productive
than Vertical Machining Centers.  One reason is that the chips are easier to keep
clear on a Horizontal since gravity is helping rather than forcing them further down
into the hole where they’re harder to get at.  But another reason is that almost any
Horizontal Mill has a 4th Axis Tombstone arrangement:

A 4th Axis Tombstone on a Horizontal Mill…

Pictured is a great example from our article on a successful manufacturer that is so
productive with their Horizontal Mills they only need 2 1/2 machinists–it’s a family
business.  They load and unload the tombstone (which is the big upright chunk of
cast iron the parts are held to while machining) while the machine is busy cutting new
parts on a tombstone in the machine.  As you can see, they have things set up so
they can even do more than one kind of part on a tombstone.  This is a powerful
technique for improving shop productivity, but it’s not strictly limited to Horizontal
Mills.
You can stick a tombstone arrangement on a vertical mill too, there’s just less
clearance available so you’ll want relatively “flat” parts to use one:
Now I’ll bet you’re wondering how useful that 4th axis with tombstone is on VMC?
Well, I wrote a whole article about how to figure it out, but here is the bottom line:
In the examples considered in the article, the 4th axis with tombstone increased your
available surface area for parts as much as 116%!  Now tell me, would having room
for nearly twice the parts on your table increase productivity?  For many jobs it sure
would.
4th Axis Continuous Machining
Now comes the fancy stuff: 4th Axis Continuous Machining, which may also be
referred to as “4th Axis Contouring”.  This video of a turbine blade being machined
makes the difference between continuous machining and indexing pretty obvious:
There are a couple of advantages to Continuous Machining.  First, you can machine
shapes that would otherwise be impossible or very difficult.  The closest thing
possible without continuous machining would be to index as many positions as
possible and use 3D contouring toolpaths to try to get the job done.  This can be
surprisingly effective, but is seldom as powerful as true Continuous Machining.
The second advantage comes when profiling with a ballnose cutter.  The ballnose
has a weakness, which is that the closer you get to the tip, the slower the flutes are
spinning.  It sounds counter-intuitive, but just think of that tip as a series of concentric
circles at different heights.  The ones near the tip are smaller circles, their
circumference is shorter, yet they’re spinning at exactly the same rpm as the bigger
circles up higher.  Hence, the tip moves slower.  Conceptually, the exact tip isn’t
really moving at all as it is a circle with zero radius.
This observation leads to a clever technique called “Sturz Milling”.  With this
technique, you use the 4th axis to allow the ballnose to be presented to the
workpiece at an angle, so the side of the ball is used more than the tip:
Not only does this allow faster milling (higher feedrates are possible) but it gives a
better surface finish and even improves tool life.
4th Axis “Wrap” Machining or “Wrapping”
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the special case of 4th Axis Continous Machining
which is called wrapping.  Imagine you want to engrave some text on the side of a
cylinder.  You could lay out a 2 1/2D engraving on a flat surface, and then if you had
some way to “wrap” that engraving around the cylinder, it would come out right.  It
turns out there are ways to do this ranging from software utilities to options in
your CAM software, to even the expedient of plugging the Y-axis into your 4th axis
and letting the hardware think it’s machining on a flat surface when in fact its doing
wrapping on a cylinder.
Conclusion
A 4th Axis can be a powerful addition to your CNC arsenal.  It enables all new kinds
of machining and can also make existing jobs run faster and require less setup.

CHAPTER 2:
4 Axis CNC Workholding
It should come as no surprise that 4th Axis workholding is pretty similar to
workholding on a plain old mill table.  Heck, many Horizontal Mills don’t have
anything but a palletized 4th Axis Tombstone as their “table”.
So, we’ll work through the workholding options and they’ll seem pretty familiar.  

4th Axis Tombstones = Mill Table Fixture Plates

Tombstones correspond to Fixture Plates on a mill.  There are many different shapes
and sizes of Tombstones available for 4th Axes.  Here’s one I’ve shown before from
a big horizontal milling setup:

A 4th Axis Tombstone on a Horizontal Mill…

The vertical mill version is similar, but typically a bit smaller:
 Tombstone on a vertical mill…
The goals with Tombstones are usually to get access to more parts, more sides, and
to make swapping many parts into and out of the machine go fast.  You’re typically
putting parts on or off the fixture plates while the machine is running and as soon as
it stops, you swap either the fixture plates or the whole tombstone to get the machine
running again quickly.  Depending on the size of the part, you made need an offset
arrangement more like the Stallion version pictured above.
How do Tombstones Increase Work Area on a CNC with
4th Axis?
 A tombstone with fixtures on all four sides set up on a Tormach CNC Mill…
I was reading an article about Tombstones in the Tormach blog recently and it got
me to thinking about how Tombstones on VMC’s can make a job more profitable.
Tombstones are par for the course on Horizontal Machine Centers, but they’re seen
a lot less often on Vertical Machining Centers.  Perhaps it’s because they’re just built
into a lot of HMC’s at the factory whereas you have to set one up using a 4th Axis on
the a VMC.  The question for this article is how to get a handle on their value?
There’s an old saying that you’re not getting the most return out of your CNC
Machine until you have fixtured a job up so that every square inch of the table’s
accessible area is being used to make parts.  Put as many parts as possible down for
each setup, in other words.  Relying on just a single machining vise, for example, can
mean a lot of available table area is wasted versus putting two vises on the table (so
you get 2 parts per setup), or two double station vises (so you get 4 parts per setup).
It’s all about how many parts the machine can “chew” on for each setup.  The more
the merrier because your setup time divided among all the parts will invariably be
less on a per part basis.
With that in mind, why not think of that Tombstone in the 4th Axis as being all about
creating more addressable table surface area?
On a Tormach PCNC 1100, you get 18 inches of X and 9.5 inches of Y travel.  So,
that’s 171 square inches you can utilize for making parts–fit as many in as you can!
Now consider a tombstone like the one pictured above.  It’s like having 4 smaller
tables available.  In fact the width of the tombstone is 4″and the length is 13″, so
counting all 4 sides, you get 4 x 4 x 13 = 208 square inches.  That’s actually 22%
more area than the travels suggest would be available on the table.  So,  for about
every 4 parts we can fit 1 part gets a free ride.  That’s not bad!
In addition, we can machine 3 faces on each part.  Ordinarily, that would take 3
setups which would be a lot more time consuming.  Pretty cool, eh?  Depending on
how much additional setup time is required for this arrangement versus just using the
table, we’ve probably made our job more profitable.  Perhaps by quite a bit.
Can we do better than that?
Suppose we had a tombstone that was a full 18″ long to match the Tormach’s travel.
Yes, we might need a big fixture plate so the 4th axis and tailstock have room on the
table, but that’s doable.  With the same math, we’d get 4″ x 18″ x 4 sides = 288
square inches.  Dang, now we’ve got 68% more available area and we’re really
starting to cook with fire.  68% more parts each time we press the green button get
finished.
Suppose we create our own “Tombstone” with a piece of 1″ thick cast iron.  We can
go 2″ if we want it to be more rigid.  Now, let’s further assume it is the width of the
table’s diameter, which for the 8″ 4th axis is 7.9″.  We’ll mount it dead center of the
axis, make it a full 18″ long, and use the two sides.  Our total area is now 7.9 inches x
18 inches x 2 sides = 284 square inches.  That’s almost as good as the earlier
tombstone example, and gives us 66% more area.
What if we have a triangular tombstone that just fits in the inscribed circle of the
table?  No problem.  The math says each of the 3 faces of the triangular tombstone
will be 6.84 inches, so we have 6.84 x 18 x 3 = 369 sq inches.  That’s 116% more
area than on our table–twice as many parts per run.  Winner, winner, chicken dinner!
When you look at it this way, it’s not hard to see how a 4th axis with tombstone can
increase the available area for parts in each setup and make available more faces of
the part to be machined.
4th Axis + Lathe Chucks
For round parts, and for many things that go ’round, lathe tooling is where its at.
After all, it’s optimized to do workholding along a rotating axis.  Hence, it’s very
common to mount lathe chucks on your 4th Axis:
 Machining a gear with a 4th axis…
All the same ideas that apply to which chuck to use in a lathe work for 4th Axes on
mills.  Years ago, I put together a chart that has been useful to me in turning work
and we can refer to it here too:

Precisio Repeatabili Convenien

Method Notes
n ty ce

3-Jaw Low Low High Common,

Self- cheap,
Centerin simple. Low
g Chuck precision,
low
 repeatability
if you
remove the
workpiece
and have to
put it back.

Can be time
consuming to
individually
adjust the
jaws, but will
result in high
precision.
Can hold
4-Jaw pieces offset
High High Medium
Chuck for turning
cams or
eccentrics.
Can hold
irregular
shapes and
square or
rectangular
stock.

Best for thin

wall work or
to grip
6-Jaw
finished
Self-
Medium Medium High edges of
Centerin
workpiece.
g Chuck
Obviously
good for hex
stock.

Great for
irregular
shapes.
Involves
clamps like a
Varies
Faceplate milling
w/ Medium Low
Turning setup. May
Setup
need
counterweigh
ts to keep
things
balanced.

Turning High High Low Great

Between precision,
Centers allows part to
 be put back
between
centers with
very high
repeatability.

The modern
alternative to
turning
between
centers.
Instead of
using lathe
dogs, which
are kind of a
nuisance to
set up, the
constant face
system uses
Constant
hydraulic or
Face High High High
other force to
Turning
grip and
drive the
spindle end.
You can now
buy these
systems
relatively
cheaply on
eBay (see
seller
800Watt who
sold me
mine).

Collet High High High Fast, high

Chuck precision,
high
repeatability,
grips well,
unlikely to
mar
workpiece,
grip spread
over a wide
area.
Expensive
chucks and
collets.
Handles
limited
lengths.
 Workpiece
must be
round and
must fit
nearly
exactly to the
collet size.

These work
from the
inside out
rather than
Expandin
High High High the outside in
g Arbors
but are
otherwise
much like
collets.
“Repeatability” applies to the ease with which you can remove a part and put it right
back into the chuck in exactly the same position so you can continue machining.  It’s
a big factor to consider, but typically isn’t as important for 4th Axis work as it is for
turning.  When turning, for example, you often have to swap a part end for end, or
you may have to take an existing part and put it in the lathe to rework some aspect.
With a 4th Axis, you will often just stick in a piece of raw material, in which case
Repeatability is not a factor.  Hence the ubiquity of the relatively non-repeatable 3-
jaw chuck for 4th Axis work.
Turning between centers happens fairly often with a 4th Axis just because you have
to make sure you’re supporting any part with significant overhang out at the end too.
How much is significant?  I was taught 3 or 4 diameters was about a much as you
want to hang off the chuck on a lathe before you start looking for more support.
Collets are really nice for turning work (hence the ubiquity of the old Hardinge Lathes
and their 5C collet system).  They get high marks on just about every aspect.  It’s no
coincidence that the original Haas 4th Axis had a 5C indexer:

Original Haas 4th Axis incorporated a 5C Collet Indexer…

Perhaps the biggest shortcoming of 5C collets is they only allow for parts of relatively
limited diameter.  This can be overcome by turning things on their head.  Consider
this setup:
I never would have guessed it, but Geof on CNCZone says the following 4-axis mill
set up was able to machine these aluminum bars to length, ensure the faces were
square, and drill and tap a hole faster than he could do it in a lathe.  You can imagine
each of those 4 parts being a 5C spin indexer and suddenly you fit quite a few more
parts on your 4th Axis.
4th Axis Vise
How about the ability to stick a normal milling vise into a 4th Axis?  Stallion makes
one such:
In fact, the Stallion is a bit more versatile because it isn’t just for vises–it’s basically a
fixturing system:
I’ve written at more length on Stallion’s Trunnion fixtures in another post.  They’re
very slick, but you need to make sure they solve the problem you need solved for
your 4th Axis.  In particular, the access to the part is going to be limited to the access
you can get form a vise.  As such, you’d be looking to use a Vise on your 4th Axis
largely because it is super easy, familiar, and to gain access to 3 sides of the work
rather than just the top in a single setup.
Note that on a big Horizontal Mill tombstone, you may mount multiple vises on 4
sides of the tombstone and even more than one on each side.  That creates a lot of
capacity!
Conclusion
Workholding and Fixturing are always an art that it pays to learn well.  I’m always on
the lookup for clever setups and fixtures and you should be too.  The 4th Axis opens
whole new avenues for fixturing and setup.

CHAPTER 3:
4 Axis Programming: G-Codes
The G-Codes needed to program 4th Axis motion are pretty simple, and logically
follow the g-codes needed for 3 Axis CNC Motion.
Let’s start with an axis diagram that makes it easier to see what’s going on:

The first 3 Axes are the familiar X, Y, and Z.  The A and B axes are potential 4th
Axes.  If the machine has both, it is a 5 Axis CNC Machine.
In other words, you can choose to install your 4th Axis as Axis A or Axis B.  The
convention is that A has an axis that spins about the machine’s X axis and B spins
about the machine’s Y axis.  In practice, since the 4th Axis is usually removable,
most of the time you’ll refer to it as the A-Axis whether it is aligned with respect to X
or Y.  Aligning to X or Y is just a decision you’ll make based on the job you’re doing.
Let’s assume you choose to set your 4th Axis up as “A”.  Then you can simply refer
to is as such in G-Code.  So, for example, you can rotate to the 0 position via “A0”.
What About Units?
X, Y, and Z moves are expressed in inches or mm depending on which unit system is
in effect.
For rotational axes (which you’ll only be using on a 4 or 5 axis machine), we don’t
use dimensions for the units, we use angles, typically in degrees. Rotating the 4th
axis to the 90 degree position might be done as A90, for example.
Incremental vs Absolute and Offsets
With most controls, 4th Axis coordinates get all the tricks regular coordinates have
available.  So, for example, you can use Absolute or Incremental Coordinates.
Work Offsets will contain not just an XYZ but also the 4th Axis coordinate.  You can
imagine if you’ve got a tombstone with parts on 4 sides, you might want 4 Work
Offsets set up to correspond to each of the 4 sides of your tombstone.  And, if you
there are 4 parts on each side, you might also have 4 sides times 4 parts or 16 work
offsets.
With those 16 work offsets, you can create 1 part program in your CAM software, set
it up as a subprogram, the set the work coordinate, call the part subprogram, set the
next work coordinate, call the subprogram, and so on, to make all 16 parts.
Part Zero in 4 Axis CNC Machining
Part Zero is, of course, the origin, when programming your part.  It’s 0, 0, 0 when you
drew the part in your CAD program or set up the origin in your CAM software.
When 4th Axis programming, it is often convenient to have a part 0 on each indexed
face of a tombstone, for example.  That way you can use Work Offsets as described
above.
That makes sense for 4 axis CNC indexing.  But, when doing continuous 4th axis
machining, it might make more sense to have the axis the 4th spins on be 0.
Choosing part zero for continuous machining will require that you be very familiar
with your CAM software.
Programming for Continuous 4th Axis Work
The brings me to a discussion of programming for continuous 4th axis work.
That’s the most complex kind of 4 Axis CNC Machining.  It’s not something you will
typically do by hand coding g-code.  Instead, you will use one of 2 kinds of software
to help.
4 Axis Wrapper Software
4 Axis Wrapper Software is the simplest way to do a little 4 Axis CNC Programming
for continous work.  In essence, you program the work on a flat XYZ plane.  For
example, you might create some sort of text engraving.  The 4 Axis Wrapper
Software will then transform that g-code so it is wrapped around a cylinder of a
particular diameter.
Fusion 360, a popular CAM package, can do 4th Axis Wrapping.
4 Axis CAM Software
Wrapper Software can be useful, but clearly it has many limitations.  To do true 4
Axis Continous Contouring requires 4 Axis-capable CAM Software.
Fusion 360 does not only wrapping, but continuous 4 Axis CNC Machining.  Here’s a
quick video showing Fusion 360’s 4 Axis Features:

CHAPTER 4:
How a 4th Axis Works
In this chapter, I want to talk a little bit about the mechanics of how a 4th Axis works
and what’s inside one.  We have a lot of readers who are interested in the details and
even in building their own 4th axis.
To create a 4th Axis basically requires that the axis be well mounted so it can spin,
and that there be some means of controlling that spin via g-code program, preferably
with as little backlash as possible–backlash is the enemy of CNC.  The mounting
process is not unlike mounting a spindle.  Typically there will be a shaft between
bearings.  I suppose you could even contemplate sleeve bearings as opposed to
precision angular contact bearings, although the latter are standard industry practice.
Tapered roller bearings can also work reasonably well for a 4th axis.  There are
some cases I’ll get to where the 4th Axis is analagous to a lathe headstock, so that’s
another way to think about it.
Let’s dig into some of design issues and mechanism types for a 4th Axis:

Geneva Mechanisms and Other Indexers

Perhaps the simplest low backlash approach would be a Geneva Mechanism.
They’re simple, reliable, and reasonably precise.  The drawback is that 4th Axis
Continuous machining is impossible because the Geneva Mechanism has a fixed set
of stopping places.  Hence can only be used as a pure indexer and not a true 4th
Axis.
Here is a shopmade air cylinder driven indexer that’s pretty neat:
 A shopmade air-cylinder indexer…
Rotary Table Worm Gear
Hobbyists are often taken with the idea of using a Rotary Table.  They’re cheap,
readily available (perhaps you have one left over from your manual machining days),
already set up for workholding, and it’s pretty easy to stick a stepper motor on one
and start using it as a 4th axis.  There’s just one little problem, only it isn’t so little:
backlash.
The worm gear mechanism of most rotary tables has a fair amount of backlash.
They’re set up so you can adjust it out, but doing so makes the table prone to binding
and wears out the bronze gears fairly quickly.  They require adjustment often to keep
the backlash out.  Still, they’re not a bad way to get started with 4th axis machining,
especially if you’re only planning on occasional low intensity use.
It’s not hard to convert a rotary table to a 4th axis, but they have a lot of backlash and
will wear out fairly quickly…
Timing Belts
You could use a timing belt just like the kind that are used for the X, Y, and Z axes on
a mill.  The problem is you’d really like to gear things down more than the timing belt
allows.  Even a linear axis has the further reduction of the leadscrew.  This approach
is doable, but you need to pay close attention to the resolution of your stepper or
servo motor lest you wind up with not enough accuracy positioning the axis.  Again,
you’re not going to be able to gear it down very much.
Because of this, I find servos seem to work better in design sketches I’ve done
around 4th Axis timing belt drives simply because they have way more resolution
than the number of steps per revolution of a typical stepper motor.  There are other
advantages too.
If you’d like to do some back of the envelope calculations for this style, I’ve got a
spreadsheet for you to download that does that.  One neat thing about this style is it
allows fairly high speed operation of the 4th axis spindle.  Enough so that with the
proper timing belt ratios you could use it as a lathe headstock and attach the tooling
to your mill spindle.  Pretty soon you’ve got a simple mill-turn setup that’s pretty
potent:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=295Phu8GnjE[/youtube]
See my write up on this neat combination 4th Axis and Mill-Turning gizmo…
Harmonic Drive
The next step up is a gizmo called a “Harmonic Drive”.  I won’t try to explain how
Harmonic Drives work, there is always Wikipedia for that.  Suffice it to say they offer
nearly backlash-free gear reduction–perfect for this application.  Put one between
your servo or stepper motor and the 4th Axis spindle and you’re done.
I got one off eBay relatively cheaply:
Harmonic Drive…
For a long time they were really cheap on eBay as they were Industrial Surplus and
nobody knew what they were good for.  Unfortunately, the word is out so you have to
look carefully to find a deal.  Nevertheless, one with an appropriate ratio would make
a sweet 4th Axis.  You could either gut and remachine a rotary table or remachine a
less expensive 5C Collet Indexer and you’ve have a real slick 4th Axis when you
were done.
Globoidal Cam
There are many more odd mechanisms that eliminate backlash and perform the
reduction function.  I wanted to mention one more since Haas just launched a new
high-speed 4th Axis that uses this approach.  It’s called a “Globoidal Cam”.  Here’s a
couple styles of what they look like:
The “pins” are bearings so the motion is very low friction and precise.  There’s a pin
on either side of the “worm cam” (my made up term) and the thing is made with
enough precision that there’s no backlash or freeplay available to the pins.  They
hold that cam pretty tightly on both sides.  It would be interesting to try to machine a
Globoidal Cam with enough precision to work in such an application.
Brakes
Enough about the rotary motion, we also want to be able to stop our 4th Axis.  In
addition, we want significant holding force when stopped.  If we’re using the 4th as an
Indexing tool, and stopping to machine, note that the further off-axis the part is, the
more leverage it has to try to turn the axis.  If you’re face milling or something equally
aggressive, you may be very glad you’ve got a brake of some kind to lock the axis.
Here’s an air-activated disk brake on a shopmade 4th Axis:
A 4th Axis Lathe?
One of the things I didn’t mention in the prior article on what a 4th Axis is used for is
the possibility of using one to turn your mill into a lathe.  If you’ve got CNC lathes,
there’s probably little point in doing so.  But if all you’ve got is a mill, and indeed, for
certain operations even if you have a lathe, it can save you a lot of time and effort to
be able to turn parts on your mill.
Traditionally, this can be done either by chucking up the part in the mill spindle and
putting the lathe tooling on the table, or by sticking a lathe headstock on the mill table
and mounting the turning tools on the spindle.  Both methods work, but with a 4th
Axis that is capable of spinning fast enough to act as a lathe headstock as well as
capable of indexing as a 4th Axis, there are a world of possibilities.  I’m not going to
delve into them too deeply here, but check out some of my posts
about CUBEstudio’s 4th Axis that can Mill Turn for more.
 

CHAPTER 5:
 4 Axis CNC Router
For the most part, the principals of 4th Axis use with a CNC Router on wood are
much the same as the more metal-focused articles that have come before.  We’ll
focus on how it all looks on a CNC Router as well as common applications for the 4th
Axis on a CNC Router.

You can mount a typical 4th axis on a router table and go to town:

The goal of 4th axis woodworking is typically engraving or columns…

The goals of 4th Axis woodworking are often a little different.  You seldom see 4th
axis as a way to access more sides of the part without more setups or as a way to
machine more parts in one setup through indexing.  CNC Routers already have lots
of XY area and don’t need a 4th axis to create more area.  In fact their limited Z
clearance would make it hard to use one for the purpose anyway.
Most 4th Axis woodworking is about continuous indexing in order to do round work
such as engraved cylinders of columns of various kinds for architectural work:

This sort of thing is ornamental turning work, and in fact, it is common to refer to the
4th Axis as a “Lathe Attachment” in the CNC Router world.  Here’s a video showing
one of my favorite style lathe attachments which involves mounting the 4th axis
permanently alongside the table:
A 4th Axis installed on a CNC Router…
The video shows a lot of the typical pineapple and other shapes common to
ornamental turning.  Slinging the workpiece alongside the table allows for quite large
work to be done and gets away from the Z-travel limitation that many router tables
have.
CNCZone has some neat pictures of a DIY lathe attachment for a CNC Router:
His solution for low backlash gear reduction was to build a “gearbox” using timing
pulleys.  Clever!
Here’s a video of some 4th axis work on a CNC Router to create a gunstock.  Very
cool work:
Some great how-to tips in this video of making a gunstock with a 4th axis…
One of the most exacting and beautiful uses for CNC 4th Axis Woodworking is inlay
work, particularly for custom guitars, pool cues, and similar work.  We’ll close with a
video of some of this type of work:
Custom pool cues made with CNC…

CHAPTER 6:
4th Axis Fixture Ideas
Here’s a compendium of ideas for 4th axis fixturing that will save time and help make
your jobs more profitable.

Quickie: A lot of 4th Axis and Indexers have an MT taper hole in the center.
Purchase a few MT toolholders and you’ve got quick change holders for small parts
on your 4th axis!
A quick way to access a lot of small parts with a Fourth Axis.  The cylinders can be
swapped out quickly for almost palette-changer like setup times.

Another cylindrical fixture for small parts.  Note the washer cutout.  Loosen the bolt
1/4 turn, slide the washer off, and the center hole allows the fixture to be removed
and swapped for another quickly.
Lots of small parts in a fourth axis fixture with pneumatic clamping…

Another setup for making lots of small parts.  It overhangs the 4th and the tailstock so
the tombstone can use the full travels of the machine for maximum production…
Depending on your application, it makes sense to think about how to make setup
faster.  Dialing in the fourth axis and tailstock can be a pain, but if you have a fixture
plate, you can set up for drop in repeatability.  Next question is how to repeat
installing you fixtures on the fourth axis?  This picture shows one of two Jergens Ball
Locks that are used together with two 3/4″ dowel pins (one right below that ball lock
in the pic) to provide the fixture plate equivalent of drop in repeatable setups on the
fourth axis.
This shop-made fourth axis tailstock that goes with the same Jergens locked
tombstone above has some cool ideas.  There’s a pin operated by the lever that
engages an angular contact bearing in the tombstone.
On the other side of the tailstock is a little movable v-block that holds the tombstone
until the sliding ballnosed pin can be engaged to hold it securely.  Very well thought
out!
Here’s a neat fouth axis fixture with 5C collets from PAWS workholding…

For this part, access on the two sides was important, and the fourth axis makes that
easy.  Note the lever to release the pneumatic lock on the left.
Fourth axis fixture clamping round stock from the side…

Very slick tombstone trunnion from Stevens Engineering has quick locks for fixture
plates.
Another neat fixture from Stevens Engineering.  If you’ve got a big enough machine,
mount 3 two-station vises!

Check out the uniforce clamps on this fixture for holding small parts.
Here’s a very special fourth axis fixture from Intellitool.  Parts are supported via V-
block cradle and individually hydraulically clamped.
What kinds of neat fourth axis fixturing have you used on your jobs?  Share
some examples in the comments below!

CHAPTER 7:
DIY 4th Axis Design
For the DIY CNC’er wanting to construct there own 4th Axis, here’s are some design
notes that will hopefully save time and result in a better 4th axis.

The first decision to make designing a fourth axis is whether you plan to build it
around a rotary table with its associated worm gearing or not. Taking that approach is
probably the fastest and easiest route, but it will have major shortcomings associated
with backlash.
The worm gears in import rotabs may actually have quite a bit of backlash. You can
try to adjust it out, and often that results in binding, which can be overcome with a
honking big motor, but which will eventually wear out your worm. In the meanwhile,
rapid wear will keep you busy readjusting it frequently.
The fancier approach is to use a Harmonic Drive. These are zero backlash devices
invented back in the 50’s for Defense applications. They’re common in CNC and
robotics, because they are compact and can have pretty high drive ratios. The other
approach one could take is to either direct drive, or use a timing gear pulley setup
such as you would often use to gear down the X, Y, or Z axes. I’ve seen really cool
4th axis setups built in this way out of spindexers or even small lathe headstocks, as
well as from scratch.
Since there are a lot of trade offs flying around, I put together a quick calculator in
Excel that you can download to do some back of the envelope calculations for the 4th
axis. It looks like this:

Avoid messing with the blue numbers, they’re formulas. Instead, enter your drive
ratio for either a Harmonic Drive or the worm gear setup on your rotab, any additional
timing pulley ratio, whether you will use a Step or Servo motor, and lastly the motor’s
torque. The calculator will do the rest and will even let you compare your design to a
Haas HRT160 indexer. The numbers I show in the example above represent the
design I will likely follow for my own project. I snagged some 80:1 ratio Harmonic
Drives on eBay that are brand new:
 Harmonic Drive Systems CSF-20-80-2A-GR-SP NEW IN BOX!
I bought two of these units. They were not cheap, but not really egregious either and
a Harmonic Drive is just the ticket for a really slick 4th axis. It would be cheaper to
use a step motor, so I am still dithering about that, but the engineering calcs show a
servo. Performance if I apply an additional 2:1 reduction with a timing pulley setup
will be pretty comparable to the Haas. There’s oodles of holding torque available with
the high drive ratio and the big servo, so I don’t know if it is worth adding a brake. I’ll
probably set up the design to accomodate one and then wait to see if it is needed.
My thinking is a motorcycle disk brake caliper and a custom rotor would be an easy
add-on, although it may be even easier to fabricate a screw-driven caliper:
Being able to lock the axis opens up some possibilities…
 Love the two speed belt drive too! 
The starting point of a project like this is a spindle and bearings. Essentially a lathe
headstock is being built, and there have been 4th axis projects based on lathe
headstocks. My plan for this one is to use bronze bearing sleeve press fit into
aluminum. Lots of reports of how nice and tight older lathes with bronze bearings run.
It’s cheap and easy for a project like this too. The chief disadvantage is if you need to
run a lot of rpm, but the bronze with drip oiling is certainly good to 2000 rpm or so.
I’m not really working too hard at making my 4th axis act as a lathe, so I should be
fine.