Author Topic: What you do when you are too cheap to buy a rotary table.  (Read 5743 times)

Offline David Kirtley

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What you do when you are too cheap to buy a rotary table.
« on: October 28, 2011, 10:16:46 AM »
Well, here are my new toys. First up is the real poor man's indexer.  I picked up some 1-1/4 hex rod and threaded the end for an ER32 collet holder I had bought for my wood lathe.  The collet holder was threaded 1in-8. I drilled it out to 5/8 so I can use it to mill myself some counterbores. I figure 6 flute is good enough. I am also going to try my hand at gear hobbing and needed a fixture to index the hob to cut it.

Ok, that was successful so next up was making a faceplate to mount it to my little 3" Harbor Freight rotary table.  Well, a huge pile of swarf later, I had a faceplate. Of course I either started the die a bit off square or I bent the nipple a bit when tapping so after I was done, I chucked it up again and turned down the face and then chucked up the collet holder with faceplate attached to my little 7x10 lathe and re-trued the faceplate.  Drilled a couple mounting holes to attach to the rotary table (well, I slotted one side to give me some wiggle room to center it with a dial test indicator.)

So far, I am really pleased. I just need to pick up some higher grade screws to mount it to the t-slots on the table and I am in business. I think I will go by HF this weekend and see if they have marked down those little faceplates since they are closing out on them.