Model Engine Maker
Supporting => Tooling & Machines => Topic started by: John Hill on November 29, 2015, 04:18:49 AM
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I was playing in my shed today*....
(https://farm1.staticflickr.com/657/23359848136_d3ab4205b2_z.jpg)
I built this contraption on my milling machine, an assortment of gears mounted on the end of the mill table to couple the movement of the mill table to a rotary table which is mounted with the axis horizontal. The mill feed screw has a 5mm pitch and for example with 1:1 coupling I am able to mill a helix with a 5mm pitch, right now I have set it up ratio of 20:65 for a 16.25mm pitch. I have allowed for compound gearing to get widely different ratios for particular jobs. The gears are 'borrowed' from my Drummond lathe and there is quite a selection of them to choose from. There are a lot of gears in use but three of them are idlers where a single idler would have been enough but I do not have any near the required size, there must be an odd number of idlers for a right hand thread. Working out the design to mount so many idlers was the major challenge of this project.
In action...
(https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5629/23303416081_ffc2e9d54c_z.jpg)
... the mill power feed can drive the action or I can use the handle which will be necessary for any larger diameter work as there is a minimum speed that the power feed has sufficient torque.
The end result...
(https://farm1.staticflickr.com/700/23359831726_94ca16313f_z.jpg)
As you can see this is in wood but it should work equally well in plastic or metals.
There are a number of things that could be better, I need to make spacers to have the gears align properly and I really should have machined that raw painted end off the vertical bracket!
*It took much more than a day to make all the bits!!!
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Hi John, nice setup there, thanks for sharing inspirative photos :ThumbsUp:
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Fun and games! Very nice :ThumbsUp:
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I should still have the Cincinati charts somewhere for gearing up a dividing head, was a regular thing at one place I worked at but that was 40 years ago. A nice take on the set up you have though.
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That's an interesting set up :ThumbsUp: I have read about these helical milling attachments but not seen one being used :)