Author Topic: Modifying a Southbend Headstock for Indexing (Read 48428 times)

Darren · « **Reply #50 on:** March 01, 2009, 07:24:21 AM »

Scott, nothing spins, hence the chunk of metal, think of it as a precision lock

SPiN Racing · « **Reply #51 on:** March 01, 2009, 07:32:14 AM »

HA HA HA HA Nooo when it was being bored... That pic of it as a blur... makes my knees tremble.

Darren · « **Reply #52 on:** March 01, 2009, 07:36:26 AM »

Ooops, misunderstood you then......

SPiN Racing · « **Reply #53 on:** March 01, 2009, 07:40:38 AM »

Nothing has come off the lathe yet... but I have had work pieces fly off stuff before and its scary LOL

I think the drill press with a big couply foot bar type chunk of metal, cutting a 2 or 3 inch hole with a hole saw.. and for some reason having the speed too high, and having it bite, and rip out of the vice grip type holder, and go through the 1/2 inch plywood wall of the garage missing me barely... is spooky.

bogstandard · « **Reply #54 on:** March 01, 2009, 08:15:45 AM »

Spin,

I think I mentioned recently that working off a faceplate is one of the most dangerous operations to be carried out on a lathe.
A very skilled motorcycle tuning machinist was killed recently, when a bit flew off the faceplate and hit him in the chest. Most probably dead before he hit the floor.

So really not a subject to make light of, and as you rightly said it makes your knees tremble. The famous words of Yoda should be heeded, 'Be afraid, very afraid'.

If you have had bits flying off, you shouldn't be doing that sort of operation until you can get it right, and be safe.

I don't want to be a safety nanny, but I also don't want to see members being maimed or killed for lack of a little scolding.

John

Bernd · « **Reply #55 on:** March 01, 2009, 12:23:39 PM »

Quote from: Divided he ad on February 28, 2009, 11:47:44 PM

Now then Bernd, my questions are ....

Are you going to use the mill for the smaller bore, or the lathe? I would think the work would stick out quite far on the lathe?

And how are you going to round the ends off ?

...... Oh the suspence!!

Looking forward to seeing the next bit

Ralph.

Ralph,

I'm going to use the lathe. The holes are in about the middle of the part. I would have used the mill but do not have a boring head available at the moment. That's why the lathe is being used.

I have been thinking how I'm going to round the ends. First will be to cut off all the excess material and them some kind of rounding fixture. It will need to be done by hand since I don't have a rotary table yet.

Hopefuly I'll have the smaller hole done this afternoon. If I do pics will be here Monday moring for your veiwing pleasure.

Bernd

Bernd · « **Reply #56 on:** March 01, 2009, 12:29:23 PM »

Quote from: SPiN Racing on March 01, 2009, 07:04:00 AM

Very cool.. I see how it will fit.. but will watch this area to see what it does.. LOL

And OMG that chunk of metal spinning like that makes me nervous just seeing the picture!!

Scott

Scott,

As I said the rpm on the part isn't as fast as it looks. You know yourself that when a picture is taken as a car goes by that the time the shutter is set to would make a car doing 20mph look like it's doing 100mph. Same effect here. Had I donr the picture with a flash you would have though that I had stopped the lathe.

Three clamps hold the part in place. I made sure thay were down as tight as I could get them with out stripping the threads. Also when I do something like this I jog the lathe up to speed for two reasons, one as has been mentioned, to make sure the piece dosen't come fly out of the chuck and second to see how well balanced the machine is going to run. So all precaustions are looked into before cutting commences.

Bernd

Bernd · « **Reply #57 on:** March 01, 2009, 08:36:36 PM »

Well I bored out the second hole. But ran into a problem. I'll describe when I get to that part.

First pic shows that I lined up the other side same as the first hole.

Clearance was a bit tight on second boring. I had a bout 1/4" between the part and the saddle.

So I bored the hole.

Then I tried to see if the bar would fit. WOW, it fit alright. I could have thrown it into the bore from across the room. Note the space at about 2:00 o'clock? Yup I had over bored the hole. Now what?

Well, after several cases of beer. I came up with the idea of a plug. I bored the hole out to 1.000" (25.4mm) and made a plug with an OD the same size as the bore. I also put a lead on the plug which is about .005" (.12mm) step. This helps to determine how close you are to the specified dia.

I then Loctited the plug in.

I then turned down the OD to .740" (18.8mm) dia. As I start boring out the hole that turned down part will break off at close to the ID of the bore.

And here you can see that part has broken off, telling me I'm close to the ID of .75" (19mm)

And there you have it. The proper ID. The bar fits with a nice tight fit.

I then used the boring bar to turn down the part of the bushing sticking out. Note the four clamps holding the part.

Here is the clamp mounted on the index head. I just need to clean up the bushing on both sides and then it's on to finishing up the cotter clamp.

Well that's it for now.

Bernd

SPiN Racing · « **Reply #58 on:** March 01, 2009, 10:34:54 PM »

EXCELLENT!

Nice recovery... (more notes)

bogstandard · « **Reply #59 on:** March 01, 2009, 10:51:54 PM »

Very nice rescue Bernd.

If it can be fixed, it was never wrong in the first place.

John

Divided he ad · « **Reply #60 on:** March 02, 2009, 03:23:43 AM »

Quote

Well, after several cases of beer

Mmmmm....Maybe that was before the first attempt? Maybe not?!!

Glad you sorted it out though, Would be a nightmare to have to make all that again!

Looks like it'll do the job nicely

Now..... Rounding the ends shouldn't be too difficult?!

Ralph.

sbwhart · « **Reply #61 on:** March 02, 2009, 03:32:14 AM »

Nicely sorted Bernd.

Busing like that is something we done all the time when refurbishing worn machinery, makes them as good as new.

Cheers

Stew

Bernd · « **Reply #62 on:** March 02, 2009, 09:50:20 AM »

Know what's nice about a save like that? It's the fact that you have a lot of maching into already and you really don't want to chuck it and start over. So you take a moment and use the gray matter to see if there's a way to save it.

Had the hole been done first, it probably would have wound up in the recycle bin.

Bernd

Bernd · « **Reply #63 on:** March 04, 2009, 09:32:37 PM »

Next is getting the cotter clamp machined up and installed.

This is what it looks like once your all done boring out the hole. A small scallop has been bored into the cotter while the bore was being bored out. Both ends need to be trimmed off , a hole needs to be drilled through the center and the cotter needs to be cut in half right at the center of the scallop.

Using the rear mounted cut off holder.

A quick facing cut to clean up the face.

Cutting off the 1/2-13 threads on the other end.

I used two drills for the center hole. The first was #10 drill so I could tap a 1/4-28 thread. The second drill with the tape is a 17/64" (6.7mm) clearance drill half way thru.

Ready to be cut in half through the scalloped center.

The cut has been started. I'm using a "razor saw". The saw is a product of Exacto Tool company. The blade is approximately .015" (.4mm) thick.

After the part is cut in two the pieces go back in the lathe to have their ends faced off.

Next I turned down a piece of steel rod 5/16" (7.9mm) to .250" (6.35mm). This was very gummy steel. Didn't leave a very nice finish.

Next I set up to cut the 28 threads per inch and start cutting. I've just finish cutting the threads.

After trimming one end of the threaded rod it will be Locketited ® in the bottom part.

This is what it looks like assembled in the clamp plate.

And assembled on the index head.

Now all I need to do is make nice washer and nut like Darren has done for his tool post to finish off the cotter clamp. Then it will be on to round the ends off the aluminum block and start thinking about making a pin holding arrangement to go into the index plate.

Until next time.

Bernd

Darren · « **Reply #64 on:** March 05, 2009, 04:38:25 AM »

Ahhhh !!!

The cogs are turning

sbwhart · « **Reply #65 on:** March 05, 2009, 04:47:24 AM »

Lovely job and right up Bernd getting close to completion hay

Stew

Divided he ad · « **Reply #66 on:** March 06, 2009, 12:05:16 PM »

Ahhhh !!! Indeed!!

I was thinking of something completely different!!

Looking good Bernd...... Now, finally onto these rounding bits

Looking forward to seeing the next bit

Ralph.

Bernd · « **Reply #67 on:** March 07, 2009, 12:23:43 PM »

Got the clamp bolt done.

I knew what I wanted so I started looking for what was laying around the shop. I did kind of like what Bogstandard would do. Look at a piece of stock and see what is in there, and of course Darren's input on using scrap played a roll in this to. So I found a spherical washer in the scrap box, a rather large bolt, my first brass ball I turned and the arbor I turned it on. I used all that to come up with what's in the picture below to creat the clamp bolt.

Now I need to round the corners of the whole clamp and come up with a plan to mount the index pin.

Until next time.

Bernd

Bernd · « **Reply #68 on:** April 03, 2009, 09:07:04 PM »

I finally got the corners rounded off after much contemplating on how I was going to do it. I do have to say having a rotary table sure makes easy work of milling things round, but there is a slight catch. I need more practice and patience to do a better job of setting the part up on the RT.

So without further a-do here are the pics.

I have run into the same problem as Bogs with having both the vise and the RT on the table. Both are very heavy and you don't want to put one on and take the other off and so forth. So I decided I'd leave both on and just move the one I'm not using out of the way. If the part I'm going to do is bigger and needs more room I'll take off the one tool that's not needed. Looks like it's time to invest in a hoist.

Believe it or not you actually need to do two true ups to get the part in the center. First the part must run on center of the RT itself and the it must be on center of the spindle. In other words the part needs to be located in the center of the RT table and then the "X" axis and "Y" axis must be on center to round the part.

The first cut was taken at .100" deep and 800rpm. So were the second and third cut. It was a bit noisy on the third cut and you'll see why further down the line.

Here you can see what the mill did when I took a .100" deep cut. Because the end mill was so long it vibrated and cut a bigger slot leaving a nasty blemish in my work piece. So I only took .050" deep cuts until I reached the bottom. It helped some. I kept the cutter about .005 off the bottom of the table.

Here's the big end all done with a nasty gouge out of it. Oh well, live and learn.

Here I'm lining up the small end with the plug I had made that I used to hold it to the faceplate of the lathe when I bored the hole in it.

Push down into the hole and clamp the part to the table. No need to indicate (clock) it in, right? Wrong.

Did smarten up a bit on this cut though. I used a shorter mill. What you can't see is that the rounding over is off center to the hole a bit. Guess I should have used an indicator to center it.

Here's the finished part, blemishes and all. It's still functional, just not pretty.

And here it is installed on the spindle.

That's it for the cotter clamp.

Maybe someday I'll make another one that is more visually pleasing, but for now this will have to do. It's functional.

Now I need to come up with a mechanism for holding the index pin. In the mean time I have some other small jobs that need to be done.

Bernd

bogstandard · « **Reply #69 on:** April 03, 2009, 11:17:26 PM »

Bernd,

What mistake is that?

To me, it is just an area waiting to be finished off.

A flat on that area is a perfect place to mount your indexing pin contraption.

Slacken cotter, index around, push pin into required hole (it could even be spring loaded), tighten cotter, or something along those lines.

The holder on the C-o-C looks a bit robust, just a T shape would be more fetching.

Maybe totally wrong, just a suggestion to make a silk purse.

Bogs

sbwhart · « **Reply #70 on:** April 04, 2009, 01:34:50 AM »

Well done that man

That looks a good job

Stew

Bernd · « **Reply #71 on:** April 04, 2009, 09:02:30 AM »

Thanks Stew for the kind comment.

Bogs,

I like that idea. Nice, small and probably fast to make. I kind of wish I hadn't rounded the part yet.

So I'll mill a flat on the large rounded end and mount the index pin.

And I'll call this Ver. 1.0.0.

Ver. 2.0.0 coming early next year to a shop near you.

Bernd

P.S. while writing this I already think I've come up with Ver. 2.0.0

Bernd · « **Reply #72 on:** August 19, 2009, 02:40:50 PM »

Well it's been April since I've done anything with this project.

Now that I've got the Rocker running I need to get to some tooling built so I can build a more complicated project. Ya like that's going to happen. Well, anyway I've gotten back to try and do a bit more on the indexer.

rleete asked what the aluminum plate was for. Well as you can see in the pic, it's to hold the indexer to the table. I need to study it a bit more to decide how and how much more I'm going to add to it.

This could be the start of my winter project, a bit early.

I'll keep you guys up to date on any progress though it may be slow.

Bernd

Darren · « **Reply #73 on:** August 19, 2009, 02:48:22 PM »

Thanks Bernd, I almost posted a

about this earlier...........

Bernd · « **Reply #74 on:** August 19, 2009, 03:04:34 PM »

Darren,

Though I felt something poking me.

Bernd

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Author Topic: Modifying a Southbend Headstock for Indexing (Read 48428 times)

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