mini mill rotary table free sample

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.

A rotary table used in conjunction with a mill allows a machinist to produce virtually any part they can design. Sherline’s rotary table is a precision piece of equipment that has been designed to work with their vertical milling machines. However, it can be used on any mill whenever the small 4-inch size would be an advantage. The only limits are size, not complexity.

The table is 2″ high and 4″ (100mm) in diameter. The main components have been machined from solid bar stock steel, and the complete unit weighs seven pounds. The table has been engraved with a laser, giving sharp and precise lines every 5°, numbered every 15°. These lines are calibrated with the 72-tooth worm gear that is driven by the handwheel. The handwheel is divided into 50 parts, making each line on the handwheel 1/10°. This allows a circle to be divided into 3600 increments without interpolation. Seventy-two revolutions of the handwheel rotate the table one revolution.

The rotary tables can hold more weight when they are not under a continuous load. Click on the Video tab above to see examples of different weights and uses for our rotary tables.

The table T-slots are identical to those used on the Sherline mill and lathe, making the vast line of Sherline tooling available for use with this product. Two hold-down clamps and T-nuts are provided with the table. Also included is an adapter that allows Sherline’s 3- and 4-jaw chucks to be screwed directly to the rotary table. An optional right-angle attachment is available (P/N 3701) to mount the table in the vertical position to increase its versatility further. With the table mounted vertically, an optional adjustable right-angle tailstock (P/N 3702) can be mounted to the mill table. It is used to support and stabilize the other end of long work held in a chuck or otherwise attached to the rotary table.

As a rookie I"m lost in the slow process of tooling up. One of the future additions to the tool cabinet will be a rotary table, although there"s no immediate need for one. Anyway, I"m already wondering what size it should be. My mill is about the same size as the Sieg mini-mill so there are limits to what will comfortably fit on the mill table (400x120 mm). To give you an idea of the rough size of my projects the list Ver 1.1 now includes tools, devices and gadgets for the mini lathe and mill as well as parts for model railway equipment. However, as you know plans seem to change all the time and the list might be something completely different in a couple of months. Right now I don"t see the need to mount the rotab on the lathe vertical slide (which I don"t have - yet).

So what size of rotary table are you mini-mill guys using? A four inch table would seem just about OK to me and six inches too big for the mill and my needs. However, I"m told some people do use six inch tables on mini-mills and get by. What about the 75 mm table advertised by most vendors in the Internet? Looks like a toy with a mass of only 1.6 kg but is it? For some tables dividing plates and/or tailstocks are not available. I believe they might be needed some day but then a simple dividing head with a tailstock can be built at a fraction of the cost using parts found in the scrap box.

Please help me out on this. Size, need for indirect dividing capability etc.? Not asking for recommendations on brand to choose, that"s another issue. Of course, comments from outside the mini-mill crowd are equally welcome.

The rotary table is a great thing to have. I prefer to use it when making eccentric shafts which at my young age helps with impressing potential employers.

I used to use old valve springs and drill rod to make paint shakers and vibrating polishers with my table. Cut a 2" 304 SS to 6" L and turn 2" of it to 1". Then put it in the rotary table vertically and take ramped cuts with a 1" EM indicated with an offset of 1" and a LH cutter offset of .5 CW rotation. continue this down 2" and you now have a 1" shaft to key for the motor, a 2" journal for a heavy duty bearing, and a 1" journal eccentric lobe with a 1" stroke with which to shake things. If you make 4 of these and use them to shake a table indexed at 90 degrees you can shake up to 1000 Lbs of media/parts with little more than a 3 HP motor and a gear reduction.

Buy the biggest rotary table you can afford! Don"t worry about dividing plates, but do get a tail stock . Get an enco 4 jaw scroll chuck for it and go to town!

G94 is used to perform simultaneous milling. The relay is pulsed at the beginning of the step so that the CNC mill goes to the next block. The Servo Control then executes the L steps without waiting for start commands. Normally, the L count on the G94 is set to 1 and that step is followed by a step that is run simultaneous with a CNC mill.

When the Servo Control executes a G94, a 250 millisecond delay is required before starting the next step. This may cause the mill axis to move before the table rotates, leaving a flat spot in the cut. If this is a problem, add a 0 to 250 milliseconds dwell (G04) after the M-Code in the mill program to prevent mill axis movement.

By adding a dwell, the rotary unit and the mill start moving at the same time. It may be necessary to alter the feed rate on the mill to avoid timing issues at the end of the spiral. Do not adjust the feed rate on the rotary control; use the mill with its finer feed rate adjustment. If the undercut appears to be in the X-Axis direction, increase the mill feed rate by 0.1. If the undercut appears in the radial direction, decrease the mill feed rate.

If timing is off by several seconds, such that the mill completes its movement before the rotary and there are several spiral moves one after another (as in retracing a spiral cut), the mill may stop. The reason is the mill sends a cycle start signal (for next cut) to the rotary control before it has completed its first move, but the rotary control does not accept another start command until it finishes the first.

A rotary table is a precision work positioning device used in metalworking. It enables the operator to drill or cut work at exact intervals around a fixed (usually horizontal or vertical) axis. Some rotary tables allow the use of index plates for indexing operations, and some can also be fitted with dividing plates that enable regular work positioning at divisions for which indexing plates are not available. A rotary fixture used in this fashion is more appropriately called a dividing head (indexing head).

The table shown is a manually operated type. Powered tables under the control of CNC machines are now available, and provide a fourth axis to CNC milling machines. Rotary tables are made with a solid base, which has provision for clamping onto another table or fixture. The actual table is a precision-machined disc to which the work piece is clamped (T slots are generally provided for this purpose). This disc can rotate freely, for indexing, or under the control of a worm (handwheel), with the worm wheel portion being made part of the actual table. High precision tables are driven by backlash compensating duplex worms.

The ratio between worm and table is generally 40:1, 72:1 or 90:1 but may be any ratio that can be easily divided exactly into 360°. This is for ease of use when indexing plates are available. A graduated dial and, often, a vernier scale enable the operator to position the table, and thus the work affixed to it with great accuracy.

Rotary tables are most commonly mounted "flat", with the table rotating around a vertical axis, in the same plane as the cutter of a vertical milling machine. An alternate setup is to mount the rotary table on its end (or mount it "flat" on a 90° angle plate), so that it rotates about a horizontal axis. In this configuration a tailstock can also be used, thus holding the workpiece "between centers."

With the table mounted on a secondary table, the workpiece is accurately centered on the rotary table"s axis, which in turn is centered on the cutting tool"s axis. All three axes are thus coaxial. From this point, the secondary table can be offset in either the X or Y direction to set the cutter the desired distance from the workpiece"s center. This allows concentric machining operations on the workpiece. Placing the workpiece eccentrically a set distance from the center permits more complex curves to be cut. As with other setups on a vertical mill, the milling operation can be either drilling a series of concentric, and possibly equidistant holes, or face or end milling either circular or semicircular shapes and contours.

To create large-diameter holes, via milling in a circular toolpath, on small milling machines that don"t have the power to drive large twist drills (>0.500"/>13 mm)

with the addition of a compound table on top of the rotary table, the user can move the center of rotation to anywhere on the part being cut. This enables an arc to be cut at any place on the part.

Additionally, if converted to stepper motor operation, with a CNC milling machine and a tailstock, a rotary table allows many parts to be made on a mill that otherwise would require a lathe.

Rotary tables have many applications, including being used in the manufacture and inspection process of important elements in aerospace, automation and scientific industries. The use of rotary tables stretches as far as the film and animation industry, being used to obtain accuracy and precision in filming and photography.

The fastest way to increase the productivity of your Haas mill is to add a Haas single or dual-axis rotary product. You can reduce or totally eliminate multiple setups, and easily handle machining multi-sided parts.

With a full line of Haas rotary products, including many specialised units designed for maximum productivity, Haas continues to lead the way to higher productivity through automation.

All Haas rotary products are designed to integrate seamlessly with the control on your Haas mill. This means true simultaneous 4-axis or 5-axis motion, synchronized with the axes of your mill. Rotary setup is a simple plug-and-play process through the Haas Control, with on-screen instructions, and diagrams that are intuitive and easy to use. It’s possible to install a Haas rotary on other makes of mill as we also offer the Haas Servo Control. Activated by a single M-code, the Servo Control is easy to set up, and fully programmable.

Adding a rotary axis to your CNC mill is the fastest way to boost throughput and increase accuracy. Because Haas began as a rotary table manufacturer in the 1980s, we are able to provide the simplest and most cost-effective entry into 4-axis and 5-axis machining available.

Going from 3-axis machining to 4-axis and 5-axis machining can be intimidating. This short video shows how easy it is to transition from basic 3-axis milling to full 5-axis design and production.

Constructed of heavy-duty materials and designed for dependable day-in, day-out operation, Haas rotary products are the benchmark by which all others are measured. We manufacture all critical components in-house at our state-of-the-art California facility. At the core of every Haas rotary table is a large-diameter, aluminium-bronze worm gear meshing with a ground alloy steel worm (hardened to 60 Rc) submerged in a synthetic oil bath.

VEVOR is a leading brand that specializes in equipment and tools. Along with thousands of motivated employees, VEVOR is dedicated to providing our customers with tough equipment & tools at incredibly low prices. Today, VEVOR has occupied markets of more than 200 countries with 10 million plus global members.

VEVOR is a leading brand that specializes in equipment and tools. Along with thousands of motivated employees, VEVOR is dedicated to providing our customers with tough equipment & tools at incredibly low prices. Today, VEVOR has occupied markets of more than 200 countries with 10 million plus global members.

The mill rotary table is one of the main accessories of milling machine. As a precision work positioning device, it is widely used for indexing drilling, milling, circumferential cutting, boring, etc. The rotary turn table for milling machine is made from HT200 casting with high quality. It has already passed the ISO9001 quality system certification. They are are very popular on the market for their superior performance, excellent design and reasonable cost.

Both vertical and horizontal with two functions. Circle cutting, indexing drilling, milling and more complicated work are possible when the vertical position of the table is used together with the tail part.