This calculator produces a table of carriage and cross slide movements. With this table an operator can use a lathe equipped with the cutting tool of choice to mimic a ball cutter cutting a hemisphere on the end of a part. The calculator will produce this table using the chosen step size for either roughing out a ball or for producing a ball that requires minimal filing.
The program needs two parameters to produce the table of cuts: the radius of the desired hemisphere (e.g., 0.250) and the step size (e.g., 0.010). Both should be entered in decimal form. (Entering fractions will produce an error of some type, dependent on your browser.) The program assumes that the stock to be cut has the same radius (will also work with square or hexagonal stock) as the planned hemisphere (as in the picture to the left). The default precision is 0.001, but this can be changed if desired.
The x's and y's may be of value for a lathe equipped with DROs on both axes.
Reload the browser window/tab between calculations if you don't want successive calculations appended.