palmgren rotary table made in china

Palmgren’s precision built slide tables are perfect for inspection, layout, and machining operations. They offer counterbalanced ball crank handles for rapid, accurate positioning and precision indicators and dials for a variety of applications along multiple axes. A wide variety of options including slide, milling, rotary, cross slide, and rapid indexers provide versatility and remarkably precise operation for any application including milling, drilling, layout and grinding.

I bought a rotary table off of ebay a while back and have used it a few times. It gets the job done. But something has always bothered me about it. The tabletop seemed to be off center, and by seemed to be, I mean it is! I took the table off a couple months ago and found that it has two tapered pins inserted 180 degrees apart. Flipping the table 180 degrees got me from about 16 though TIR to under 10. This was measured off the center hole in the table, so it"s still not good enough to use to indicate the table in. So, tonight I took it all apart again and man, the things I found out. I thought that Palmgren was a quality tool, so I would like to think that somebody made some changes to the table, but I have no idea why.

Second, the bottom of the table has a boss that extends into a recess in the gear/hub. The recess in the hub has right at 0.00088" TIR and measures 1.7537" in diameter. The boss on the bottom of the table, the hole in the middle of the table, and the outside of the table are not concentric. All three have different centers. The boss has a diameter of 1.739" as measured by my calipers. (The calipers also measured the recess at 1.750". I need to double check something there.) Regardless, putting the gear on the bottom of the table, there is definitely some movement there. So, the hole-boss is about 0.012" TIR. The hole to outside of the table is about 0.006" TIR. Those two are not in the same direction, like about 45 degrees apart.

The plan is to bolt the table to the faceplate on the lathe so that the perimeter is dialed in. Then bore it so that the center hole is in the center. Oh, and make it a nominal size. As it is now, it mic"s 1.017" Then turn a mandrel and turn the outside of the boss down so I can fit a ring between it and the recess in the gear/hub. I can"t do it all at once because the bolts will be in the way unless I drill some new holes. I guess I could do that and then tap them for some set screws. Now that I think about it, that might be the better way to go so that both of those features can be turned in one setup.

1. In the horizontal position, the left (top in the vertical position) hold-down notch has a rounded and painted surface on the top. This means the clamp bolt"s washer doesn"t sit parallel to the table. This means it has a tendency to slide around as it is tightened. I will probably mill it flat, shortly.

3. There is a fair amount of backlash in the worm gear, but I haven"t even looked for an adjustment yet. There are 2 clamps on the side of the table and these can be locked in place to deal with the backlash.

6. There are 2 clamps, 4 bolts, and 4 t-slot nuts supplied. On a 6" table, it doesn"t take a big part to run out of clamping room. I have already made a simple ring to bolt down a part that I was making.

7. In the vertical position, the base is too wide to allow both slots to be used to clamp it down to the table. This is a concern for me. I found this out today and used a couple of 123 blocks to wedge it in position. There isn"t much room to use a clamp block as the clamps that are on the rotary table swing down very close to the mill"s table as it is rotated.

9. Remember to lock the mill"s table in place or you can get some very puzzling movement due to backlash in the mill"s table. It isn"t much but it can be a headscratcher!

Palmgrenmarks its 100th anniversary as a manufacturer of products for the metalworking industry. Its founder, Clarence Palmgren, is credited with the design and manufacture of some of the first machine vises, cross slides and rotary tables.

Originally named Chicago Tool & Engineering Co., the company’s first product was theangle machine vise followed by traditional drill press vises and a lineup of machine and milling vises. In the early 1950s, the company designed its rotary tables and cross-slide tables, which were capable of transferring workpieces from one machine position to another without losing squareness or alignment.

About 20 years after the company was founded, it was renamed Palmgren. During World War II, Palmgren supplied machine vises and aircraft propellor service equipment as well as underwater cutting and welding equipment for the navy. Palmgrenremained family owned until 1997. In 2013, the company was acquired byCH Hanson.

Palmgren’s rotary tables perform a variety of operations. They are very useful for cutting segments of circles, circular slots, cutting irregular-shaped slots as well as other similar operations. These tables permit accurate positioning of work under the machine spindle or for inspection and layout applications.

FWIW, I bought a six-inch rotary table a few years ago. As far as I can tell, it was made somewhere in eastern europe. It had some tight spots and a little backlash in the gears, and the scale engraving was crude. I can"t remember what the price was, but I know it was below $400.00. (Including a set of indexing plates.) I wanted a better one, but the budget was needed for other items. For the fraction of my shop time I need a rotary table, I considered the poor quality, low price workable.

I also bought a 4-inch rotary table from Grizzly a while back with the intent of making it indexable via stepper motor and arduino control, but that project did not work out and the table itself is just too hard to use: Another future project to sort out.

My Palmgren No. 000 angle vice had already undergone various repairs when I acquired it. As you can see, one of the mounting lugs is broken off, and someone has previously had to braze the handle back onto the screw. This looks more like the results of user abuse than build quality. Nevertheless, comments from various machine workers forums about the make,even in its heyday,are not flattering. Someone even commented that the company was making Chinese-quality tools before the Chinese got into this market. Still, someone else claims that the company made some of the vises that Sears sold under its Craftsman label. If so, they couldn"t have been that bad.

The company has a relatively long history. Clarence Palmgren founded the Chicago Tool & Engineering Company in 1919. In addition to vices, they made more complex tools like rotary tables and milling attachments for metal lathes:

At some point, they changed their name to Palmgren Steel Products. In 2013, they were acquired by C.H. Hanson. According to theirwebsite, that company was founded in 1866. They add:

Rotary table in market mainly includes 4 kinds of mechanism that is worm gear, roller cam, DD driver and harmonic structure. The following is the introduction:

1. worm gear: it’s one of  the most popular structrue in NC rotary table  because of its irreversibility and costs.The worm is generally made of bronze, but the wear resistance is poor. In order to improve the service life, some manufacturers use the alloy steel.

3.DD motor: it’s the most efficient rotary table with the highest precision. It has the highest precision because it has no mechanical structure, which is directly driven by motor , no reducer. It has high technical difficulty and high price. It is generally used for five axis machine tools.

Probably the most common "serious" add-on for any lathe is a milling slide - this accessory providing a travel either just vertically or, on models with a swivel on the both the horizontal and vertical axis, at any chosen angle. A wide variety of types have been offered with some, like one version of the later Myford model, having a double swivel with a two clamp bolts on each axis that added much-needed rigidity; others, for example the sophisticated Boxford type, had only a swivel on its vertical axis but could mount, for work holding purposes, either a vice or, more usefully, a small T-slotted table (and, in addition, a very expensive dividing attachment.) A special model, intended to carry a high-speed milling and grinding spindle - and oddly not equipped to do otherwise - was the English Potts, this being a vertical column type and available with base fittings that allowed it to be mounted on the majority of model engineering lathe of the time. Some slides on watchmakers" lathes and of the Bench Precision type (as made by such as Stark, Ames, and Schaublin) were also intended for this purpose, the drive coming from an "overhead", a special countershaft fitted above the lathe with its pulleys arranged to give very high r.p.m. A rather special example of this type - and a very fine one - can be found on a superb American-built lathe of unknown origin, the "Unknown41"

TheChicago Tool & Engineering Co. of 8365 South Chicago Avenue, Chicago were in business from around 1918 making a variety of machine-tool fittings - vices and rotary tables included - with their market most definitely directed, in early years, towards the Amateur and casual user of machine tools rather than professional, amongst the more printable comments about their products being: "Palmgren showed the Chinese how to make pure crap for the hobbyist". So, possibly not something that one would find taking pride of place in a toolroom then...

Designed to be as simple as possible to mount, the claw-like foot of the Palmgren milling slide was just slipped over the toolpost stud and bolted in place. If the lathe had a T-slotted cross slide - though this was a fitting very rarely found on US lathes, but common on small lathes made in the United Kingdom - the unit could be secured by a T-nut and stud. Three sizes were offered, these having jaw opening widths of 1/1/2, 21/2and 4-inches with the vise forming the whole of the slideway and the only means of securing a job - the largest version being over twice the price of the smallest and intended for much bigger lathes. All types have been found with a number of different right-angle mounting brackets, these being supplied to fit most popular lathes including models by South Bend, Logan, Clausing, Delta/Rockwell and Sheldon: what might be described as the "standard" type used a simple slotted (fork-like) base for clamping down, with the slide arranged to pivot around a boss locked by a single through bolt; another mounting took the form of a forked foot with the slide clamped by two bolts passing through a pair of curved slots. Yet another had a base with a curved slot that allowed around 30 degrees of swivel each side of central and, through the vertical face, a single bolt for swivel that was backed up - for use when set vertically - by two additional bolts with each passing through its own (curved) slot. When the slide needed to inclined either side of central, one bolt had to be removed, leaving just one to aid clamping. A micrometer dial was fitted as standard to the feed screw, with many users finding it far too small - although because the dial did not obstruct the slide"s travel, this was longer than would otherwise have been possible.

Do milling slides work? They do, but all suffer from several intractable problems including being able to see what is happening (you"ll notice the illustration below shows an operator posing for the photograph - but unable to see the cutter working�) However, when fitted with a high-speed spindle for milling or grinding they are perfectly acceptable, though when holding work to be machined by an end mill or slot drill held in the chuck of a lathe the spindle speeds available are rarely high-enough for effective use with small diameter cutters. Rigidity can also be a problem and the Palmgren, with its vice constructed as an integral part of the slide, had a particular drawback - if the vice handle was wound up really tightly the whole slide was distorted sufficiently to make it stick or even jamb. However, if patience is exercised - and just very light cuts taken - most jobs can be completed successfully. The lesson? If you can afford a vertical milling machine and have room for one, life is very much easier.