On Mar 13, 1:44*pm, "T.Alan Kraus" wrote:
Thinking about gearing a universal indexer to the x axis of my BP to do
spiral cuts. Several pitches needed, thus need some kind of gear matrix.
Anybody familiar with that?

cheers
T.Alan

I wanted to do that one day...
I got two steper motors, and put one on the X axis, and one on the RT.
Sure worked slick!
Took about 30 minutes to make a temporary (not pretty) mount.
Cheaper, faster, slicker than finding the right gears, and all the
mechanics of it.

--Did something similar once; built a machine for Helical Products
to machine helical couplings, heh. We direct coupled the X-axis leadscrew to
a custom indexer, then changed gear ratios as needed to get correct 'pitch'.
What made it interesting was the multiple-start thread.

--
"Steamboat Ed" Haas : Don't forget to spay and
Hacking the Trailing Edge! : neuter your politicians...
www.nmpproducts.com
---Decks a-wash in a sea of words---

On Mar 13, 12:48 pm, Half-Nutz wrote:
On Mar 13, 1:44 pm, "T.Alan Kraus" wrote:

Thinking about gearing a universal indexer to the x axis of my BP to do
spiral cuts. Several pitches needed, thus need some kind of gear matrix.
Anybody familiar with that?

cheers
T.Alan

I wanted to do that one day...
I got two steper motors, and put one on the X axis, and one on the RT.
Sure worked slick!
Took about 30 minutes to make a temporary (not pretty) mount.
Cheaper, faster, slicker than finding the right gears, and all the
mechanics of it.


H-N:

Could you please elaborate a little on your set-up, because this
"electronic gearing" with a master and slave axis has many
applications.

Eg., what software did you use, or did you write the program
yourself? Any peculiarities you encountered/solved? Did you put an
enoder on the "master" axis?

Any tips for someone to replicate your set-up?

Thanks,

Wolfgang

Thinking about gearing a universal indexer to the x axis of my BP to do
spiral cuts. Several pitches needed, thus need some kind of gear matrix.
Anybody familiar with that?

cheers
T.Alan

steamer wrote:
--Did something similar once; built a machine for Helical Products
to machine helical couplings, heh. We direct coupled the X-axis leadscrew to
a custom indexer, then changed gear ratios as needed to get correct 'pitch'.
What made it interesting was the multiple-start thread.



Did you fabricate the gear change system or did you use an existing setup ?

cheers
T.Alan

T.Alan Kraus wrote:
Did you fabricate the gear change system or did you use an existing setup ?
--We took off the feed dial and replaced it with a timing pulley,
then used a similar pulley on the back of the indexer. Once height of indexer
had been shimmed up to tighten a cog belt we were good to go without
backlash.
--The other thing we did is change the pulleys in the head
because we needed a spindle speed of around 5,000rpm for an unusual tapered
endmill which had to cut to depth in many shallow passes.
--
"Steamboat Ed" Haas : Don't forget to spay and
Hacking the Trailing Edge! : neuter your politicians...
www.nmpproducts.com
---Decks a-wash in a sea of words--