Making rectangular plate in to a round plate on the mill.

[DeereGuy]

Well gang, I am finally getting around to posting a small project I did for Weston.  I won't tell you why he needed this.  That's his job when he gets ready.

Weston had handed me a piece of 1/4" plate rectangular in shape and ask me if I would make it round for him.  I, of course said, "you bet".  I thought about first trimming the corners off to make an octagon shape to start out, then take it over to the lathe.  Then I thought....hey I can use my face plate on the mill    So that's what I did.  The rotary table was already zeroed from the last part I did so I was able to skip that step.  Starting out by clamping it first to the faceplate so I could drill two holes to put 2 bolts through



then I set the edge of my end mill .02 outside of what I wanted for a final dimension I began to make my roughing cut.  I used carbide 3/4" fine toothed roughing mill and started to take a .250 deep cut.  I went as far as you see here and decided I needed to back it down to .100.



Here is a shot of the finished rough cut.


I placed in a regular ¾” end mill to make take it to the final dimension.  I don’t know about you guys but I have found that the side cut of a rough cut end mill is really rough…..hmmmm…..maybe that’s why they call it “rough cut” .

Here is how the part turned out.


Weston picked the part up from me this evening and will continue on later with the saga of this now round object.)…Stay tuned.

[Bernd]

Nice one Bob. This works great if you can put holes in the round part, but dosen't work good if you can't. Still it's a neat idea.

How the heck would you have held that part in the lathe anyway? With a faceplate? Same as on the mill? And then again it'll only work if you can put holes in the round part or do you have a secrete way of doing it? 

Bernd

[bogstandard]

If you are very careful Bernd, you can friction turn large round parts without having any holes in them.

Very similar to how I turn flywheel blanks, but instead of putting a centre drilling in the part, you make up a block with a centre drilling instead, and use that between the rotating centre and the part to be turned.


Bogs

[John Hill]

In my limited experience I have already discovered that it is important when turning a disc from a plate that the outer piece being seperated from the disc is firmly attached to the face plate.  I have a nice steel pretzel to remind me of that lesson.

[DeereGuy]

Luckily in this case I could drill the holes.  If I couldn't have then I would have made my first attempt at doing it with two sided tape and a tiny center point to use the live center in the tail stock.  Also I would have trimmed most of it off with the band saw leaving very little to do on the lather.  The cut would have been light and I would have spent a whole lot more time doing it.  As it is I have about 20 minutes start to finish.  Oh..yea and very low rpm until I had it completly round..then maybe kick up the rpm some...

[websterz]

Well gang, I am finally getting around to posting a small project I did for Weston.  I won't tell you why he needed this.  That's his job when he gets ready.

Weston had handed me a piece of 1/4" plate rectangular in shape and ask me if I would make it round for him.  I, of course said, "you bet".  I thought about first trimming the corners off to make an octagon shape to start out, then take it over to the lathe.  Then I thought....hey I can use my face plate on the mill    So that's what I did.  The rotary table was already zeroed from the last part I did so I was able to skip that step.  Starting out by clamping it first to the faceplate so I could drill two holes to put 2 bolts through



then I set the edge of my end mill .02 outside of what I wanted for a final dimension I began to make my roughing cut.  I used carbide 3/4" fine toothed roughing mill and started to take a .250 deep cut.  I went as far as you see here and decided I needed to back it down to .100.



Here is a shot of the finished rough cut.


I placed in a regular ¾” end mill to make take it to the final dimension.  I don’t know about you guys but I have found that the side cut of a rough cut end mill is really rough…..hmmmm…..maybe that’s why they call it “rough cut” .

Here is how the part turned out.


Weston picked the part up from me this evening and will continue on later with the saga of this now round object.)…Stay tuned.

What size is your rotab? It's a Grizz...I can tell that by looking. It looks just like mine.

[DeereGuy]

It's a 6 inch that I bought used about 5 years ago and I have no idea who the manufacturer is.