Program
I don't do spherical turning very often, so I haven't invested in the time to make a spherical turning tool. This little program allows you to use your parting tool to do spherical turning. You have to enter a certain amount of data about your lathe (which is retained in a Windows .ini file so you don't have to do it again). Once the data has been entered, the bottom half of the program window has a text box with all the data you need to produce a lot of cuts to create a stepped ball. The smaller you make the steps, the better the quality of the sphere. The text may be printed or copied for taking to the workshop. Once the ball is finished, file it on the lathe and it's done.
The process is quite, quite amazing to see. It's as if you are slowly revealing a ball from inside the bar.
Download the Spherical Turning Program. (253 kb)
The program is a Windows program, and is known to run on Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP and Win 7 (64bit). It probably works on Vista, though I haven't tried it. The program is a single file .exe file and writes a windows .ini file in the directory you put the program into. The Borland C++ Builder 4 source code is included so that you can check for yourself that the program does nothing unpleasant to your computer.
7 Nov 2013, program amended to add tickboxes to allow certain parts of the output to be switched on or off.
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