"Eric R Snow" tesnow@whidbeyDOTcom wrote in message
...
This is mainly aimed at those who use 4 inch rotary tables (RT) on
larger machines such as a bridgeport mill. I have a 10 inch RT, a 12
inch crosslide RT and an index head that accepts 6 inch chucks. They
all get used to varying degrees. One advantage of a
horizontal/vertical RT over the index head would be the lower height
and shorter overhang. The 6 inch index head has a lot of overhang and
rigidity suffers because of this.

I had the Phase II 6" H/V rotary table (actually more like 6.75") Loved
it, but it was much too big for either my Centec 2C mill or my Burke #4.
I sold the 6" and bought the Phase II 4" table. This time with a tailstock
(couldn't fit that on my mills either for the 6" table). Love it even more.
The rigidity is excellent and I think that the relatively low
profile in both Horizontal or vertical mode, might make for greater net
rigidity in my setup. The four slots, at first, appear to be limiting, but
I fixed that in short order with the following tooling.

1. A 4" four-jaw chuck mounted on a small aluminum plate that I machined.
2. A 3" three-jaw chuck mounted on a backing plate available from Boston
Brass .. when I bought the chuck.
3. A full set of MT-2 collets.. and a drawbar for the same that I machined.
4. A bunch of MT-2 arbors threaded for the drawbar.
5. Various T-nuts, T-bolts, clamps, etc. T-nut jaws (as per your
suggesting).
Actually, that's aout the kind of tooling you would set up with any
rotary table.

A note of caution regarding the indexing plates for this little
table. Phase II just doesn't have it right. The only indexing plates
available has just 20 holes or something like that. Hardly worth the
effort. I bought them and promptly returned them. If I were into gear
making, the first step would be to find some existing indexing plates that I
could adapt.

Boris