Can You 3D Print a Usable Rotary Table for Machining?

Get into the world of machining and you’ll quickly notice something: everything is made of very heavy iron or steel. Everything. There is a good reason for that and it is rigidity. Conventional wisdom says that 3D-printed parts don’t belong in a machine shop, but is that really true? To find out, Unemployed Architect decided to 3D-print Brandon Sander’s rotary table design.

If you don’t recognize the name Brandon Sander, you may still know his YouTube channel: Inheritance Machining. He is one of YouTube’s most watchable machinists and his work is truly beautiful. A couple of years ago, he designed and machined a rotary fixture plate. In typical Sander fashion, it is both functional and impossibly gorgeous. But could it still work if it was 3D-printed, rather than machined from a big block of steel?

Unemployed Architect needed a rotary table or something similar, like a rotary fixture plate. But to make a good one, he needed a rotary table. You see the problem.

In this video, he attempts to build Sander’s rotary fixture plate from 3D-printed parts, so he can machine a real rotary fixture plate. Thermoplastic tends not to be very rigid, so he printed the base on a resin printer using Siraya Tech Sculpt resin. He then embedded threaded inserts and locating pins in that.

The big question is if it worked and the answer is “kinda.” That huge hunk of cured resin is actually pretty rigid, but it still isn’t quite up to normal machinist standards. Some in-situ machining, including flycutter surface flattening, helped with precision. But though it works well enough to do light passes, it isn’t a good substitute for a “real” tool.

Should you build one of these yourself? Probably not. You’re better off just buying an inexpensive imported rotary table. But it is still fascinating to see someone trying to incorporate 3D-printed parts into machining.