making a rotary table in stock

2023-05-21 21:22:12

Years ago, before I learned CNC, I owned a Phase II 8″ horizontal/vertical rotary table that I purchased from Kap Pullen’s Getmachinetools.com store. He has them at a good price, BTW, and he’s a darned nice fellow to deal with as well as being a frequent HSM contributor. Anyway, its a nice little table, but I hadn’t done a whole lot with it for quite a while after purchasing it. As is so often the case, one day, a project landed on my doorstep and I was glad to have it.

Before I could get started, however, I had to make some accessories for it. Basically, I needed some T-Nuts to fit the table, as well as a little fixture that makes it easy to hold a plate up off the table through a hole in the center so you can machine it. The latter, what I call a “plate machining fixture”, was inspired by something similar I saw the Widgitmaster of CNCZone fame using to make Dremel clamps for his mini-router:

The Plate Maching Fixture and 3 Homemade T-Nuts. T-Nuts are easy to make: square a block to the proper dimensions, mill the side reliefs, drill, and tap. These are much smaller than the mill’s Bridgeport standard T-slots, so I made them myself and I’m using 1/4-20 bolts with them. They’re made of mild steel.

I turned the round spigot using the 4-jaw on the lathe. I’m making the fixture out of MIC-6 aluminum plate, which is pre-ground very flat on the sides. This is a 5 inch by 3 inch piece. I’ve clamped it to the rotab using my T-nuts and the regular mill clamps and step blocks. It is sitting on parallels to make sure I don’t cut into the table. You can also see how I’ve clamped the rotary table to the mill table using a big cast iron V-block I have. You can never have to many blocks with precision faces hanging around!

Having a 4-jaw chuck on your rotary table is mighty handy! Because it’s a 4-jaw, you can dial in the workpiece by adjusting the jaws until it is perfectly concentric with the table’s axis of rotation. The best way is to make an adapter plate that attaches to the back of the chuck in the same way that your lathe does so you can exchange lathe tooling with the rotab. Here is an example:

For the example, the chuck is threaded onto the adaptor plate, and then the holes in the adapter plate’s flange are used to bolt down to T-nuts on the table.

In my case, I bought a 4-jaw from Shars brand new, and simply drilled some through-holes in the chuck to mount to the table directly without an adapter plate:

First, you want to make sure your part is properly centered on the table. To do that, I clamp the table down on the mill table (no special place is needed), put my Indicol indicator holder on the mill spindle, and find some round feature on the part to indicate on. For example, on the plate milling fixture above, indicate on the round boss, or on the center hole. Spin the table and bump the part in until spinning the table doesn’t move the indicator.

Second, locate the center of rotation directly under the mill spindle. You can simply use the X and Y table handwheels to do this. Use that Indicol to indicate off of a circular feature you want centered under the spindle. Turn the indicol around on the spindle and adjust the handwheels until the indicator stays put relative to the spindle position. A Blake Coaxial indicator will make this last even simpler.

When you’re rounding partially by cranking a part around on the rotary table, it’s really easy to go a little too far and screw things up. The answer is to drill the end points to make the exact stopping point on the rotab a lot less sensitive:

Centering with a Blake indicator is really fast, but what if you don’t have a Blake, or worse, what if your mill is too small to accomodate one? Here is a nice solution I found on a German site. This fellow has made an ER collect fixture for his rotary table, and has taken care that when installed on the table, the axis of the collet is aligned with the table’s axis. He can then place a dowel or other straight pin in the collet and line up until it will go into a similarly sized collet on the spindle. Nice trick! It’s similar to how Widgitmaster showed me to align a drill chuck on a QCTP to the lathe centerline with a dowel pin held in the lathe chuck.

making a rotary table in stock

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making a rotary table in stock

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making a rotary table in stock

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making a rotary table in stock

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making a rotary table in stock

Spring collet YCC series are spring collets that can chuck round work pieces easily and accurately in machining with rotary tables and index tables. YCC series can be used with the exclusive collet adaptors.

Collet adaptor CA series is a simple unit that makes the spring collet clamp and unclamp by manually opening and closing the cap with the attached lever. The way to open and close the chuck is easy. Just insert the attached lever into the outside diameter hole of the cap and turn it. Work pieces can be chucked and unchucked easily.

After machining has been completed by one time, loosen the clamped work piece, change its position and make it clamped again for the next machining.

Flange center FC series are a rotating assisting device with a work driving dog. It is a flange that is used set to the table face to support the edge of a work piece with 60°center hole and rotate the work piece with the dog.

making a rotary table in stock

when I started the welding I was going fast and was distracted a bit by helping my son change his winter tires - totally gapped that I had a roll of stainless in the machine - Argh!! Was absolutely sh...tie to start and things did not look nice. Had to grind off the tacks carefully and then change out wire.

to help keep things straight I cut a 1/16” deep pocket that the side fit into so they maintained proper alignment and spacing. I did have some shrinkage as things cooled so I skimmed the centre holder for a better fit. It is snug but moves about reasonably well.

making a rotary table in stock

1. As I understand it, you set the rotary table vertical (and indicate it square I assume), then mount a blank in an arbor. I don"t understand "use a center to hold the arbor". Is the "center" the hole in the rotary table? Is yours Morse, straight?

making a rotary table in stock

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