CNC Wax Bell

Yes! It can be done, as if there was any doubt.

I started with a 2″ diameter 3″ long wax cylinder. On the Taig micro lathe I turned half the length down to just over 1″ (not critical) so it could be held in the self centering 4 jaw chuck shown here. Once in this chuck it was never removed until finished.

I machined the inside on the Taig CNC mill as a 3D pocket. Then I switched to the 4 axis setup and ran the outside profile. When finished is shown in the first picture. Note the smooth finish that is possible.

Then I went back to the lathe (still in the original chuck) and turned down the stem and top of the bell. It would have been too weak if I had done this earlier. The big end will be cut off before spruing for the cast.

Not bad for a first try but still a lot of things to tweak.

The next bell I will spend more time on the CNC picture taking. I’ll do some video of the machining action. There was quite a pile of wax chips and turning ribbons. That green wax is a joy to machine. The bottom three pictures shown are more fitting I suppose for the lost wax casting over in “Ramblin’ Dan’s Workshop” than here in the machine shop blog but to get to this point there was a whole heck of a lot of CNC machining and some manual lathe work.