how to use a rotary table on a mill for sale

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.

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Rotary Tables└ Workholding Supplies└ Workholding & Toolholding└ CNC, Metalworking & Manufacturing└ Business & IndustrialAll CategoriesAntiquesArtBabyBooks & MagazinesBusiness & IndustrialCameras & PhotoCell Phones & AccessoriesClothing, Shoes & AccessoriesCoins & Paper MoneyCollectiblesComputers/Tablets & NetworkingConsumer ElectronicsCraftsDolls & BearsMovies & TVEntertainment MemorabiliaGift Cards & CouponsHealth & BeautyHome & GardenJewelry & WatchesMusicMusical Instruments & GearPet SuppliesPottery & GlassReal EstateSpecialty ServicesSporting GoodsSports Mem, Cards & Fan ShopStampsTickets & ExperiencesToys & HobbiesTravelVideo Games & ConsolesEverything Else

The HRT160-2 has two rotary spindles to allow two workpieces to be loaded. This reduces the number of tool changes and the number of times the machine stops to load parts. Requires a Haas mill with...

This is a high precision rotary table/air bearing spindle made by Professional Instruments Company, Block-Head model 10R-15. It was pulled from a state of the art Moore Tool M18 AG Diamond Tool La...

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For sale has two pieces of the 4th axis of rotation of the renowned Japanese company Yukiwa. Both indexers worked on our Brother TC-31A pallet machine. They were dismantled because we were making a detail that did not require 4 axes. Until the end of their work, they were efficient and worked 100%. However, they have been lying unused for some time, which is why I am selling them as untested.

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Shars Tool offers a wide selection of horizontal & vertical rotary machining tables, tailstock, and rotary table with 3 jaw scroll chuck. Whether machining large or small workpieces, Shars has the machining table and dividing plates for your application. Place your order today!

I have a 4" small import table that I like*. It doesn"t tilt and is really low profile. This is really good for my X2 mini mill - tilting takes up too much height - and I"ve never really needed tilting. If a feature needs to be titled on the table I usually jury rig something up.

*By like I mean it really is the only option in this size. There really isn"t a whole lot of selection in this size - 6" is where you start getting to be a little more picky about quality. Most of the small import tables leave something to be desired - although they are workable. Hemingway looks to have a nice 4" kit but it would probably be a fair bit of work to make. If you just need something to get a job done the 4" imports are generally usable. Sometimes you just need to do a bit of rework on the tables, disassemble, deburr, clean etc.

Edit: The 4" vertex is probably your best import bet. More pricey but less pain. The Vertex ones are a bit higher than the other imports though. Just be mindful of this. I don"t have the Vertex one and I am considering it as the worm ratio is significantly higher. That said the lower profile on mine for the X2 is appreciated.

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The crosslide table all depends on where the slides are...above the point of rotation or below. Below is pretty much the cheap line and really is redundant putting on a mill as you already have 2 axis there. Now, slides above the pivot point allows you to position your part any where on table, center it above the pivot using the slides (U & V axis?) all with out tapping it about like a rotary table w/o slides. Also, you can then offset a part to center a desired radius elsewhere...example: you need to mill a 4" square hole with r.535 in corners. On a plain rotary table you would need to relocate the part for each corner...with topslides you use the U & V axis to position the center of R.535 over the pivot and turn the corner. This works for all kinds of stuff...milling angles off the X&Y that come tang to a rad, or even milling multiple circles or countours on a single pc w/o remounting and locating the pc. Think of 3 O-ring grooves on a hydraulic cover, or the snowman shape in a gearpump hsg. These can get confusing as now you have a manual machine with C,U,V,W,X,Y,&Z axis....wow.

The best has to be Advance 15X15. I know this unit cost $4500 15 years ago.Troyke made them also but I don"t know of others. Palmgren I thought made the bottom slide type. Alas, the 2axis CNC retros can outrun it and these are rapidly becoming dinosaurs.