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F. George McDuffee F. George McDuffee is offline
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Default Gear making (was Calling All Machinists)

On Mon, 29 Jun 2009 07:34:43 -0500, Ignoramus24381
wrote:
snip
This, from my point of view, can be addressed with a perl script
running on a laptop. It could tell me how many turns to make, etc.
Something along the lines of what I did with "Egyptian CNC". Ergo, the
laptop could say "turn the handle 3 times and stop at XX.XXX".

snip
One of the major problems is that the rotary tables tend to be
calibrated in degrees-minutes-seconds while the spreadsheet will
calculate in decimal degrees.

If you will send me a good email address i will send a excel
program that calculates the decimal degrees for a given number of
teeth and then translates those decimal degrees into
degrees-minutes-and seconds [rounded to my rotary tables seconds
resolution]. If anyone else wants a copy of the spreadsheet send
me a good email address.

I went ahead and bought the index plate set w/ arms, after I got
the rotary table and now have a dividing head.

The spreadsheet is currently set-up for a 127 tooth gear [exact
metric change gear] but can be adapted to any number of teeth.
Note that even the dividing heads with the index plates have
problems cutting the larger prime number[100] gears such as 127.
Some of the very expensive dividing heads allow split or divided
indexing using 2 index plates, but this appears to be a royal
pain.

For our readers on a tight budget, you can download an excel
compatable spreadsheet from openoffice for free.
http://www.openoffice.org/product/calc.html
I just checked using my copy of openoffice 2.0 and calc opens the
spreadsheet but you may need to reset column width.

One trick is to use a slitting or slitting saw to remove most of
the material before you switch to the gear cutter.

Good luck with your gear cutting and let the group know what you
learn.


Unka' George [George McDuffee]
-------------------------------------------
He that will not apply new remedies,
must expect new evils:
for Time is the greatest innovator: and
if Time, of course, alter things to the worse,
and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better,
what shall be the end?

Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman.
Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).