cutting gears with a rotary table free sample

SteveEx30 cutting the teeth in plastic goes pretty quick,probably a couple hrs.I got 3 gears out of that blank after the teeth were cut.That Nyloil MDX was a pain in the ass to part off.You nave to use plenty of coolant.The stringers will not chip and make a much stronger stringer than Delrin.If you stop before you part off completely it wraps tightly in the groove and takes a while to pull out before you proceed.I have found,with plastic and brass that when cutting multiple gears that it is quicker to cut the teeth first first then part off the blanks.It is easier to finish the blanks and then cut the teeth but you have to make a more complicated mandril and have to change blanks one at a time.I was able to stay on cutting the teeth to completion,but had to wait a day after I set up before I could start,then several days before I could finish because of breakdowns,other priorities.So it is hard to figure exact time but maybe 3 hrs per gear.Since these types of jobs are added value of my own initiative the time factor is not as critical as it would be in a job shop with a customer waiting.One good thing about this place is that I am allowed to tackle any job that I think I can do.I am 70 years old and when I think about retiring,my hobby would be dicking around in my shop doing basically the same thing as I do at work,without the insurance,pay and benefits!

The handle can be removed easily by releasing the caphead bolt. The handle being located with a keyway. This then allows the dividing plates and crank to be fitted in place of the free-rotating handle.

The crank handle is held in place with a grub screw – ensure this is tight and that the handle and pin are at 90° to the crank plate before trying to fit the crank to the table.

12 divisions is achieved with 7.5 turns – so 7 complete turns of the handle and then with a 20 division plate the dividers are set at 10 + 1 holes apart.

his takes a bit of concentration to use as you count off the rotations and then add the part rotation needed for the division – just be consistent and all will be fine.

A very small 12 tooth gear made with a cutter designed for a larger number of teeth and hence the undercut on the teeth – the wall is rather thin at the centre, but this was a trial to see how the rotary table works when being used as a divider – aim is to make more gears for my Wood and Metal Clock.

A pair of gears cut together out of mild steel – 60 teeth and 43mm diameter. One of these is for the camshaft side of a four-stroke engine in construction.

I created a quick google spreadsheet (below) that gives me divisions up to 200 and for completeness the first row gives 360 divisions. I have added a link to a downloadable pdf version if that helps. Note: number of hole intervals means you need to count the hole that the pin is in as 0 and then count out the number of intervals/steps from there (next step being 1).

A freely available spreadsheet that has the full dividing plate and rotary table calculations. You can set it up for your specific table and print off the sheets. You just need to know the worm drive ratio.

I have seen a Rotary Table with dividing plates at a good price, what are the advantages of a Dividing Head over the Rotary Table. I know that a chuck can be fitted to the Rotary Table, it seems to me they do the same job.

Check the rotab can be mounted on its side or you have a big enough angle plate. Sometimes the extra diameter of the rotab gets in the way but otherwise it is just as capable as a dividing head until you get to the more complex "universal" type that can tilt and do differential indexing for prime numbers, or be driven to make spirals.

A rotary table is a very useful but not often used device in most workshops, takes up space as well, I know, as I have one together with the dividing plates. Be careful using the tables for gear cutting as there are some with errors and its very annoying to find that you have a thin tooth for no fault of your own. Recently I made a stepper motor Arduino controller from the article in Model Engineer Workshop issue 249 which I can recommend. No more thin or one tooth short errors, works good. The article used two switches as inputs, where as I and I"m sure others have done, used a 4 x 4 key pad. Not being very well versed in micro electronics I received help from readers on this forum, and from my neighbour Steve, many thanks fella"s. John

Unless you have a CNC machine or stepper driven rotary table, a manual rotary table is one of the few ways to machine cylindrical paths in a way you couldn"t otherwise. You"d struggle to do that with a dividing head. I used my rotab to machine internal and external surfaces with success, although nowadays my CNC machine does a much better job in a fraction of the time.

I have seen a Rotary Table with dividing plates at a good price, what are the advantages of a Dividing Head over the Rotary Table. I know that a chuck can be fitted to the Rotary Table, it seems to me they do the same job.

They are similar devices with similar functionality. But I"d say a Rotary Table is generally more flexible than a Dividing Head. Often a table can be mounted either flat or vertically, whereas heads are typically one-way. It"s occasionally useful to be able to clamp work direct to a table. Heads often only divide while tables usually do angles and divisions.

I have a rotary table, and combined with a calculator can divide any number of divisions, not limited by the plates. BUT it"s even easier to get wrong if not systematic.

My Vertex HV6 is one such. It cost me three scrap items, before realising that the errors were not mine. I made up my own division table, using EXCEL. This showed that the published table had eight errors or omissions!

Thanks for these replies they have been very informative. The reply from Dave Halford about cutting curves on the Rotary Table can be a problem with the worm gear, if not up to it.

I have been given a 4 inch table some time ago unused which was purchased in the mid eighties. It is a import and will cut a curve in steel as I used this to recess a flywheel.

I like the idea of a Rotary Table with plates, the ones I"ve seen advertised by Warco seem quite a good price, but are they any good,can they cut curves in steel with out stripping the worm gear ? Fed up with buying crap, stuff not fit for purpose until modified.

This is what can happen to the gears when cutting a curve if the load is too high. The rotary table was not one of the cheap ones but a quality one, made in Japan.

A rotary table is a handy accessory for your mill for lots of applications.and I would not be without one but would advise that you get the biggest that would fit on your mill table..

I have happily cut curves in mild steel and gauge plate on my Soba 6" but they were within a reasonable expectation of what the table could handle and the depth of cut was also appropriate to my machine and tooling. Take a look back through some of Paul"s other photos and see the size of work being done on his similarly made but "quality labled" table and is it any wonder the gears stripped?

Chain drilling followed by light finishing cuts with a keen cutter may be a sensible alternative to trying to make heavy cuts with less than keen cutters (and not climb milling, either), when using a less robustly built rotary table. So, much in agreement with JB, I suppose.

Apologies to Howard if this is well covered elsewhere, but the calcualation to *check* an entry in a division table is relatively simple. It does involve vulgar fractions. Do schools still teach that?

Whatever about the rotary tables themselves being crap and way out,there is no excuse for the charts to be in error. A simple test run would soon show up any blunders which should then be corrected before production.

If anyone wants to try amending the original spreadsheet for gear ratios other than the original 90:1, the EXCEL spreadsheet is viewable at the top of the thread quoted by Neil. Hopefully, changing the formula from 90:1 to, say, 40:1 will produce sensible answers for Rotary Table or Dividing head with that ratio.

Am wondering if I am clever or brave enough to make two more division plates for my HV6. A "D" plate with 22, 24, 26, 28, 32,34, 38 holes and an "E" plate with 42 and 46 holes. All these should be "doable" with the existing "A", "B" and "C" plates, and would fill a few gaps in the table.

Another project would be to make a small Dividing Head for the mini lathe, (inspired by Stub Mandrel"s one, using the division plates from the HV6. Another "Make it up as you go along job"!

Small spur gears  would usually be made with a dividing head . As the diameter of the gear gets larger the limit is set by the center height of the dividing head.

The next option is to tilt the dividing head into the vertical position. By now the rigidity of the sytsem is not very good. The solution to this is to arrange some sort of support to the gear being cut at the point where it is being cut.

An alternative to using the dividing head is to use the rotary table in the horizontal position. The workpiece is mounted with spacers on the rotary table. The milling table is raised so the workpiece is at about the same height as the cutter on the horizontal arbor. Each cut is made by raising the milling table so the cutter cut the full width of the face of each tooth.

with a vertical milling machine the simplest way of holding the cutter is by using a stub arbor. If a dividing head was being used the easiest arrangement is for it to lie along the axis of the milling table. In this case the cutter has to be in front of the workpiece or behind it.. The maximum diameter is limited by the distance between the axis of the dividing head and the axis of the stub arbor – not very much.

The alternative is to use a rotary table mounted vertically. The most obvious way is for the axis of the rotary table to be at right angles to the milling table. In this case the cutter cuts the gear at its side. A variation on this  is to tilt the vertical head so the cutter is above the top of the gear being cut.

In the example above the diameter of the workpiece is probably larger than the largest diameter that will fit on any lathe likely to be available. But it is quite possible to turn it on the milling machine.

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The 4-axis CNC milling machine cutting the sample parts with ball endmill tools. The 3-axis machining center attach the rotary table for cutting the sample parts.

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