homemade rotary table factory

Ok, well business is dead and I have no money so it"s time for a project while I wait for things to pick up. The last few times I used the mill, I could have used a rotary table, so I looked around and seen I had enough materials laying around to make one.

This guy did a real nice job on his and is what inspired me to do mine and he has drawings.I have those plans also and I designed mine based off of his design. I scaled mine up a bit to a 5" table. One thing I noticed about his design is that there is nothing but the fit of the bearing race to the steel plate holding the table assembly in so you could pull the table right out of the plate if the fit too loose. I emailed him about it and he verified that for me but also said he hasn"t had any problems with his rotary table designed like that. I changed my design to make the plate thicker thus enabling me to add a lip that the bearing race presses up against so the table can"t be pulled out of the plate. It"s kind of hard to explain.

I"m contemplating making it without a gear and just marking the rim of the table with lines and numbers representing degrees/fractions of degrees. I would use this for those quick and dirty applications that don"t require super accuracy. I could have used something like this numerous times already. Eventually I would like to either purchase or make a rotary table with an 8" table but that"s down the road some.

Just scraps from where I used to work, the table is A10 I believe, it sure ate some cutters up. the base is cold roll and aluminum. The gears are from a bed motor. All free stuff just lying around the shop.

I"m contemplating making it without a gear and just marking the rim of the table with lines and numbers representing degrees/fractions of degrees. I would use this for those quick and dirty applications that don"t require super accuracy. I could have used something like this numerous times already. Eventually I would like to either purchase or make a rotary table with an 8" table but that"s down the road some.

I was wondering how to mark out the degrees without a rotery table to begin with. I"m thinking that using a simple 2d design software and printing out the markings to wrap around the circumfrance would work... maybe not the best way, but it should work.

*Also: I agree those scribe marks are super helpful. Often times what I am working on doesn"t require much angle accuracy, so just eyeballin" it gets me within .05 or so degrees. I just design to the nearest whole number for angles when possible. (also easier to eyeball on larger rotery tables)

I was wondering how to mark out the degrees without a rotery table to begin with. I"m thinking that using a simple 2d design software and printing out the markings to wrap around the circumfrance would work... maybe not the best way, but it should work.I"ll probably use my 5C spin index. It can index in 1 degree increments.

This is a re-post of how I built a home-brew rotary table for my mill just over two years ago. Having used it quite extensively, it still works perfectly well for my needs. During the posting, I"ll add some additional comments coloured red in the form of a review; it"s not often one gets to review or re-think a tool or operations after a period of time! I"ll also add a timeline to show how the build progressed.

Some research turned up bits and pieces of information on RTs, and then I hit gold on DeanW"s build of his rotary table - excellently detailed as always by Dean - and the plans available there. Thank you both Dean and Steve

I sourced and scrounged whatever materials I would need for the build; some I had lying around, and a lot I had to buy. I ended up with: Some bits of 10x60mm flat bar and a bit of 12mm plate for the base, a lump of cast iron for the table, phosphor bronze to make the gear out of, an old bit of bolt for some material to make diverse bits, aluminium for the handwheel, a brand new angular contact bearing, a bit of shaft from a printer with 2 small bearings to salvage for mounting the hand wheel shaft, and some 8mm and 16mm silver steel to make the shaft, worm and gear cutter from:

Then I clamped the plate to the mill table with some bits from the clamping kit and supported on two identical bearing outer rings as spacers, and milled three of the four sides square, with the two opposing sides I could get to, to the exact width for the plate (140mm):

Then I bored the hole bigger; (from 19mm to 61.97 mm) I started with a cheapy tungsten carbide tipped boring bar and 20 thou (~0.5mm) depths of cut and things went OK until I tried some bigger cuts. At 40 thou cuts things were going well, but then the carbide tip splintered and everything ground to a halt. Not feeling in the mood to try and re-sharpen the tool, and with the hole big enough for my favourite HSS left-hand(that should be right-hand!) turning tool bit to have adequate clearance, I just plonked that in and finished the cut. I intentionally left a 0.5mm thick ridge about 2mm wide at the back.That was to allow the bearing I have to be pre-loaded without the center of it actually rising up and touching the bottom of the table later on :

Then I flipped the plate in the chuck - just loosened two adjacent jaws of the chuck, flipped, and tightened down the same jaws, making sure the plate was flush on the chuck teeth with no swarf trapped. There was no need to perfectly re-center it - the last facing was just to get rid of the scale and to make sure the top face was completely parallel with the bottom. As the table will be riding on this surface, I tried to get a better finish - and succeeded:

I first faced off the one side of the welded base frame in the mill. I made a couple of quick clamping plates from more of the flat bar I used for the base - just saw off and drill an 11mm hole to allow some pivot clearance for a 10mm bolt , and sawed the heads off a couple of 10mm bolts to make shorter clamping studs than are in my clamping kit. The "new" clamping plates was needed as the clamping plates in my clamping kit is too thick for the slots I milled in the base. (Two years later, and these same ad-hoc clamping plates still hold down the RT in use!) T-nuts and the clamping nuts came straight from the clamping kit. I cleaned the mill table VERY thoroughly before clamping down the piece on a bit of paper to prevent it slipping:

Then I flipped it upside down to do the other side. Same process as above - clean and a new piece of paper. With the slots now higher above the table, I needed thicker spacers for the off-set ends for clamping... I settled on using some of the triangular step blocks from the clamping kit; a small one and larger one combined to provide the height. I couldn"t use the flat bar clamp plates as-is on just one triangle block, as it is both a bit soft and too rounded on the ends to ensure a good grip on the step block. I don"t recall ever seeing step blocks used in combination like this to , but it worked a treat

I removed the 4-jaw from the lathe with the table-in-making still mounted on it, and set it aside. The 3-jaw went on, and I started on the main shaft. First off, cut a bit off the big bolt from the first photo in this thread:

I flipped the main shaft-in-making in the 3-jaw, and turned the flange section that mounts into the back of the table. The outside of the flange actually becomes a register to keep the shaft concentric with the table, and was turned as accurate as I could for a light push fit into the hole in the table. For some reason I got a poor surface finish; but could not do anything about it. This photo shows the part with the right hand section turned down to "register" size and the end already faced:

I centered the chuck using the table feeds and a bit of that 16mm silver steel in the drill chuck to go into the hole, zeroed the X handwheel and dialled in the 17.5mm offset I needed. Drilled the first hole, loosened the clamp, rotated the chuck against the fixed blocks to maintain position, and indexed with the little square on the same "side" of the next jaw. Clamp down the chuck again, drill & repeat for next hole... QED

Next the holes needed countersinking from the back side... My countersink bit was too big, and waaay to short to reach in there. A broken 8mm drill bit volunteered, and I carefully ground its end to a 90 degree angle with suitable cutting faces. That made countersinking easy, and the holes turned out quite well with no chatter:

The last step, was to punch a witness mark into the flange and the back of the table; these I then "connected" with a scribed line - this will be used to make sure everything can be put back exactly the same at a later stage:

Then I used the punch to mark the table for the screw locations; simple; keep the alignment mark I made aligned; the punch is a close fit in the holes and stands upright by itself in each hole; and a good whack with a hammer on it and each center is marked:

I carefully centered and drilled each hole 4.2mm and 7mm deep on the mill with the chuck clamped to the table. After each hole, I used the drill chuck as a guide to run in the first tap from my M5 tap set. It only left a couple of threads on each hole before bottoming out, but enough to start the 2nd tap outside of the mill on the workbench. Each hole was run down with the second tap till it bottomed. Then the holes were run through with my modified version of an M5 plug tap - it had a pointed tip that I ground down while building "Fred" to really thread some holes to the bottom:

I mounted the 4 jaw with the table/shaft assembly back on the lathe. I know my 3-jaw grips eccentric by about 2 thou - but dead parallel from the chuck to about 100mm away from it - on a 26mm workpiece, and when I tested the shaft on the whole lot as mounted now with a dial indicator, that"s what I got. About 0.05mm eccentricity along the shaft"s entire length, but it was parallel. The outside of the table part as mounted was still spot-on center. So I carefully turned down the shaft part to the needed 25mm for the bearing inner race; it was at 26.5mm so for a first cut I just took off an infeed of 20 thou (that takes _just) over 1mm - off the total diameter). Then I measured the piece to be sure - it was down 25.48mm. I honed the cutting bit in-place on the lathe; just a couple of light touch with the oilstone - then went down to just over size at 25.1mm. A last cut part-way for the last 0.1mm, and I stopped for a test with the bearing and it lightly pressed over - so I finished the cut:

Next I turned the shaft down to 24mm up to a point 15mm away from the base of the table; the bearing is 17mm thick, and with the slight indentation in the table and the offset lip in the bearing mount hole in the base, that leaves me room for threading and run-out to the bottom of the bearing inner race. The 24mm section will be single-point threaded at 1mm pitch for the bearing pre-tensioner nut. I stopped short of the threading; that will take a while, and had better wait for the weekend.

Looking for something more to do, I decided on doing the holes to bolt the base top to the frame. I forgot to mark out the circle the table would run on on the base top plate, and being hit by a sudden sense of aesthetics, I needed to "see" a ring on the base top plate where the table would run. I pressed the bearing in the plate, and fit the whole lot over the shaft and used a permanent marker to mark the outline of the table on the plate:

First thing, I decided to make the pre-load nut. I removed the 4-jaw chuck (with table in making et al) from the lathe and put back the 3-jaw with outside jaws. Some 50mm aluminium rod was then turned down to just under 40mm for just long enough to make an 8mm wide nut and allow parting off. Then I drilled it out to 19mm for the same depth (19 mm, as it is my biggest drill):

Next I did some more work on the nut in the mill. I want to be able to lock that nut in position when fitting the table together, so it needed some method of achieving this. I slit and counterbored it on one side with a 6mm center cutting slot mill to clear the head of an M3 cap screw, then center drilled the bottom of the counter bore, and ran a 2.5mm drill (that"s for M3 tapping) right through, and then just drilled 3mm down to the slit for thread clearance. Then the 2.5mm section remaining below the slit was tapped M3 for as deep as my taps would go. I also milled two opposing flats on it for use when tightening it up. I didn"t take photos of every step mentioned here; but here are two I did take:

Then I sat down on the bar stool I keep handy (my "working table" is a bit high), and tapped each hole. The 5 mm clearance holes in the top plate are excellent tap guides to keep things square when starting with the first tap, so nothing fancy required as guide. Just manual work

The last challenge was mounting the vertical slide to the mill table. I nearly started cutting metal to make new T-nuts and so on, when I noticed the cross-slide extension I made for the lathe about 4 years ago. Some checking followed; and YES! - I can clamp it to the mill table to mount the vertical slide on. The completed assembly looks like the cobbled together solution that it is, but it should work:

The Bits "n Bobs mentioned is a block of brown stuff... My metals are too precious to waste on a once-off use like this, so wood it will be. With the 4-jaw still occupied by the table-in-making, the wood "jumped" onto the face plate after some persuasion. I then started boring out a pocket to fit a bearing in - after center drilling and drilling a 6mm hole right through the block:

A bit of a revelation to me as well; the ideas I had for making the worm shaft adjustable just went down the drain; not enough clearance, so it"s back to a bit of head scratching. And people wonder why I"m going bald...

When I got home after work, I had a good look at what I have already, and an eccentric will work a treat. The gear height is adjustable - so that"s not a problem; if it needs to move closer to the table top I can counter bore its face to clear the bearing pretension nut. Just some fine detail to finish off in my noggin - mostly related to the vernier scale I want on the assembly. As I"ll need to turn an eccentric soon, it"s time to get the table off the 4-jaw chuck. But this is no time to rush. I thought things through, and decided to graduate the table first; everything was set up ideally already; easy 72 divisions on the dividing head to mark 10 and 5 degree divisions on the table.

I haven"t made a spindle lock for my mill yet, so I opted to cut the division markings rather than broach them like Dean did. Darn; all my suitable toolbits have square shanks... So first, a tool was needed. Some 10mm silver steel, a 4mm cross-drilled hole through at a slight angle (not needed here, but possibly in future) and drill & tap the end for a 4mm grub screw. A short length off the 4mm round HSS sticks I keep around; a bit of grinding, and the result:

On to the mill - with the cutter set dead on center. I fed Y till the cutter tip just touched against the side of the table, and then moved the workpiece away on X. Another 0.2mm feed on Y and then I started cutting the first 10 degree graduation. Just deep enough in on X till it looked good to me, then I set the mill table stop to stop there. Then it was turn the DH, feed X to the stop & back out; repeat till all the 10 degree marks were done:

Bandsaws being the fairly rough machines that they are - and I"ve taken some pains to get mine as accurate as possible - the cut will inevitably shift slightly and not be perfectly square - especially in the vertical plane while cutting. I kept a careful look on the work, and when I detected too much of a deflection in cutting lines, I would stop the machine and turn the workpiece. I did this three times, as can be seen from the photo showing the table and the offcut:

Next it was back to the 4-jaw with the table. I put bits of soda can on the radius of the chuck jaws to prevent marring of the graduation marks. Then I dialed in the table dead on center on the outside body with just a vibration coming off the needle of my best indicator when revolving the chuck. This step is crucial in the long term:

I then added a close fitting 16mm "test bar" in the hole I bored initially through the table center. For me this is a length of silver steel that I know is straight; no fancy test equipment in my shop (YET!). I tested run-out on this a good distance away from the table body. This was to make sure that the back of the table is at a precise 90 degree angle to the axis so that I could turn the face completely parallel with the back side:

I then faced the table repeatedly with very light cuts - just 2.5 thou infeed at a time; I didn"t want a sudden heavy cut on the irregular bandsawed surface to knock things out of kilter! Then I bored the center hole out to 20mm diameter to a depth of 5mm - this will become the register for my lathe chuck mounting plate - and chamfered the register hole and internal 16mm step left at a 30 degree angle. This is for easy location of mounting the chuck plate in future, as well as for easy centering of the RT on the mill table with a bit of 16mm rod clamped in the collet chuck. As a final step, I used a sharp-pointed threading bit to turn light alignment rings on the face 10mm apart from each other.

ATS Systems is a national leading machine tool accessories and automation supplier delivering reliable solutions with unwavering support that increases manufacturing productivity and throughput leading to profitable results for its customers. For over 20 years, ATS has installed over 135K machine tool accessories and automation systems allowing customers to achieve productivity gains of over 50% and increasing profitability.

Recently, the company was hired by BMW to develop a small-lot welding system for one of its plants in Europe. The system requires a rotary table with an open center and a high load capacity. Within the center sits a heavy-duty robot that performs the welding. On the outer edge are four tooling sections, each of which weighs up to 4 tons and holds parts as they are welded.

During system development, EDAG researched several rotary tables. Unfortunately, none of them were strong enough to bear 16 tons. This situation convinced Manfred Hahl, managing director and COO for The EDAG Group, to have the company develop the system in conjunction with rotary table and automation specialist Weiss GmbH.

After extensive discussions, Weiss agreed to make a customized rotary table based on the company’s CR 2600 series. Developed within six months, the table has a 20-ton capacity. The center opening is 2 meters in diameter, which is large enough to accommodate a robot with a 2.5-meter reach.

The table’s drive plate can withstand a vertical dynamic force of 500 kilonewtons and a static force of 1,000 kilonewtons. With a low installation height (300 millimeters), the table allows for ergonomic manual or automated loading of the part.

Currently, BMW is using two of the tooling sections (A and C) to weld rear hatches and hoods. To begin production, the worker loads a workpiece to be welded into section A. The table is rotated 180 degrees, and the robot makes welds on the top and bottom of this workpiece.

Simultaneously, the worker loads a workpiece to be welded into tooling section C. When the workpiece in section A is finished, the table is rotated 180 degrees so the workpiece in section C is ready to be welded and the finished piece is removed from section A.

Thus far, BMW has used one large robot with the rotary table. However, Hahl says the automaker likes that the table’s opening can accommodate two or more small robots. BMW also likes that the table enables welding of four different door types in small lots.