Pretty obvious that is not a right angle! It must be re-arranged!
Totally Screwed Machine Shop
Milling Machine Projects
Updated December 30, 2013 20:30
Spin indexer mod'
I bought a cheap china made 5C spin index. On arrival It was noticed that the ends at right angles to the axis of the indexer where square and the sides parallel to the axis where rough cast. I use a "chunk in a slot" to square accessories. The way this was I'd also need a square to align it. A prospect that finds me much too lazy to actually perform.
So I mounted an angle plate on the ol' mill and went to work.
Pretty obvious that is not a right angle! It must be re-arranged!
Certainly It could have been done with shims under it and clamped to the table but honestly I couldn't remember the last time I used the angle plate. "We will be friends until we are old and senile then each day we will be new friends" I just did it that way because of the tooling on hand.
60° Dovetail cutter.
This is a simple fly cutter type arrangement. I had a little problem with this one so if it didn't cut so well I'd re-do it. 1st pic is 1 1/4" stock turned to 3/4" with a relief to ensure the collet can only clamp flat. Everything is turned at once to avoid as much run out as possible. I had intended to use some positive rake inserts my friend Paul gave me as it seemed a no brainer that they'd work better than flat. Unfortunately they have no clearance angle and dragged. I'd already intended to run a shim and these were thicker than the TCMT inserts I ended up using with 2 shims. Works pretty well as long as you are in no hurry. Just finished the dovetails on my tangential cutter and it worked very well. Smooth and cuts to .025 but as it got deeper I settled on .010 just so I could keep the feed rate up and not have to hang the tongue out the corner of my mouth to micro feed.
Stub Arbor
As an example. This one was made/sized for involute cutters. 3/4" shank. I'll be making more as I go along to fit various tooling on hand (mostly donated by Paul).
I have the slitting saw arbor complete now 2nd picture and have cut the bottom off my Tangential cutter with it (made it way too tall since that was the chunk of metal). Block of nice steel and it was cutting with most if not all the teeth. Like it!
I'm having a lot of fun with this new hobby. I'm mostly making tooling right now so as to avoid buying it later.