Disassenbly and Assembly of a Brown & Sharpe Dividing Head

hello Keith Riker here at vintage machinery org so today I thought what we do is we would a shoot a little video talking about a brown shark type dividing it and this is a content that there are topics that has come up out of requests from actually multiple viewers on my channel who have seen this dividing head kind of sitting in the background some of my videos and have asked me about it we've had some conversations over email and over the comment board on YouTube concerning this dividing head and specifically I've had a couple per question people to show how to disassemble this item and put it back together because they have either identical or very similar brown shark type dividing heads that they picked up and needing to take apart and just to a good cleaning on them in where they've just gotten you know older what-have-you and just need to be gone through and I've got some experience in doing that so real quickly the back story on this dividing head so several years ago I had a machinist vise that I had up for sale and I had posted it somewhere another one even beware but a gentleman in North Carolina contacted me about it and wanted to buy it and I was actually traveling to North Carolina so I carried it up there with me with me on the trip then I stopped by a shop we had a great visit and you know we had agreed upon price for whatever while I was there he just asked me he said is there anything in particular you're looking for and I said well yeah I'm kind of looking for dividing head and he said we'll I may have a deal for you so he had this dividing head but there was a catch it had been completely disassembled it was in a box and it was completely taken apart and when he acquired it he actually acquired it just like that it was in this box it was completely taken far he told me he said you know look I don't know how the parts are there or not I was told by the person I got it from everything was in there but I can't taste and he told me he actually tried to put it together a couple times and I wasn't able to figure out how to get it together he finally gave up food in the box you know one thing led to another weeded up making a swap I swapped in the device and took a chance on the dividing head and brought it home with me so when I got home and had some time I would come out to the shop in the evenings and over the course of about a month I finally figured out how to put this thing back together and it was no easy job again I've had a bucket of parts and you know I was able to find a parts diagram online actually on my vintage machine our website a gentleman had posted a manual for this had an exploded view but the manual was actually for an import clone of this and there it wasn't exactly the same but I kind of got adjust to how some things went together and anyway I was able to get it back together I was very fortunate out of the whole thing I was missing one screw up here on the front which I still haven't replaced and it was missing the direct index plate that goes on here which is actually something that I can make at some point in time and I just haven't done that's where it's got holes you saw a piece here that engages in coals and instead of using the dividing plate on the side if it's a common division you just kind of directly index using the pen you just put this pin in there and lock it in place and that indexes it so anyway that was really all that was wrong with well there was one of the little small a pen a little pen was missing out of this piece here that lost the index plate in place and I was basically I made one out of a drill bit I took a drillbit that was the right size cut it off and epoxy that emplacement and replace that pin but anyway enough on that we're going to show you how to tear into this thing and take it apart but before we do get into it I do want to just briefly discuss this type of dividing head just so you understand Brown & Sharpe started making these I think in the early nineteen hundred's may they may have started making them late eighteen hundreds I don't know the exact date but I know for a fact they were making these in the early nineteen hundred's and it was a very good design it was such a good design that as soon as the patterns ran out on this everybody started making clones out kind of like they do now and a lot of things so you have a successful design and everybody starts copying it this particular one I don't believe is actually brown sharp I think this is an early clonise an old one this one has been around for quite some time there's some telltale signs on here this but this one is old and I'm guessing it was it's probably pre-1950 I'm guessing just by a few little hints and I've been able to pick up along the way I don't know who made it it's not stamped for anything but I have seen and actually worked on some of the old original faster option they are mark Brown & Sharpe even today you can still buy a clone of this dividing head there are several import companies that are making these over in China and you see them on the eBay you see in a lot of the discount catalogs and even in like a traverse or whatever you can you can look and actually buy a clone of just made by order they're sold by multiple continents and they're still basically the same that I had that Brown Sharpe designed you know probably close to a hundred years ago if I over 100 years ago they made three different models three different sizes really I guess well I guess three different sizes but mostly two sizes and then there was a bear mission on the large one here and the most of the two two sizes are unique they're just for doing straight dividing so you can just you know could do your different angles that you want to do but they also made a universal type and that's the type this is and it's got some gearing on the side and it actually has a place where you can put it here on the back and you can actually put this on a milling machine gear it to the feed on the table and what it allows you to do the spiral milling so like spiral gears so as you index it for each time you index it as the table is moving along is turning this gear which is actually turning the front down here so you get that spiral gear so this is the you know I guess it was the Cadillac model it will do to both simple dividing or the compound dividing as first power dividing and that's the one I have here now as far as how they work and how you take them apart you know really the only difference between them is you know this was got this gear box home here's got a couple extra parts but the inside of it is basically the same so even if you don't have this exact model it's going to be very similar so now let's get in here and start tearing this thing apart alright so let's start tearing into this first thing we want to do is go ahead and take the indexing plate off we'll start by loosening this nut on the end here so the nut comes off there's a little brass washer bushing on there this little piece here just kind of tightens down and holds the the whatever you call this I can't think of the name of it right now but the indexing piece here so we'll pull this up and this is a spring-loaded and we just pulled that out and that allows us to slide that piece out that so now there is a clip on here that kind of clicks everything in place that goes on past this we wouldn't pull that washer off and we're just going to take a screwdriver alright so now we're going to pull off the school indexer here that the quadric piece and then you can see the screws that actually hold the index plate in place so we'll get a screwdriver and pull those off the index plate should come off now if you have the universal type show you there's this little piece right here and all this does is it's got a little pin in here and that engages the back of this plate and uh basically when you're not doing spiral milling you're doing spiral billing this whole piece here will turn as it's spiraling and that's fine but when you're not doing spiraling you don't want to turn in what happens is is this uh thing here spring-loaded it comes out and it engages in one of the holes pins that pin gauge them with the holes on the index plate and that will keep it from spinning I'm going to go ahead and twist it back in there and I just hold it out of place right now so next we're going to go ahead and pull off the gear box here and there's three screws holding that in place okay with those off it may not want to just come right off there's actually some pins that pin down into this thing you have to get those out as well so there was originally two now I only got one in mind on what happened to that one but it's not really that important but you may have to take a screwdriver or something and get behind this and kind of pry that out I'll have these pins are real good and tight so you know if you need to take this apart I'll tell you what we'll just go ahead and do it there's a nut here and that should there's two years in there so they need to go this one out here first using a soft blow hammer there that pulls that out and all this right here will probably come and come out together these ears are meshed in there together so they're going to have to come out together so there's two years on this one that piece there just fits in there spins on that there we go all right this is a piece at less you read a scale on here for the angle and we'll go ahead and pull that out and again this has got a pin in it so in addition to the screw see the pin so that can become difficult to get out this fine don't try to knock it out sideways be very careful with it alright so now there's two screws holding this guard in place it's a little grass guard there on the front and this just come right off and this is this piece up here there's actually a nut on the inside that holds this so don't try to take this off you can start turning this and it will loosen up but it's very likely that that nut will not come out of just spin on the inside and also you don't want to screw it all the way out because if that nut will fall down into the bottom of this and can give you give you some problems so as you try to pull the rest of it apart so that's all on this side now so we're going to flip it around to this side we'll pull the lock knob out this engages onto the spindle on the inside to lock it in place and there's a little brass piece in there so the steel does not actually go right up the edge of that so it's not coming out but it shouldn't be in the way but just we know there's a little brass piece in there alright so now we're going to loosen up the knobs here so there's two knobs on this I'm looking to see that in the video or not but there's an inside knob and outside knob and they both do different things so if you look if you turn the outside knob what it does see this piece over here that's on a cam and what that is doing is when this up it's actually engaging the worm gear in the bottom of the drive here and that worm here is a what actually turns or allows this turn when you're spinning this so we see when I turn my handle it's actually turning the nose spindle up here if I turn this back it disengages that worm gear now and I turn it it's not doing anything and the actual spindle here will spend by hand so if you're doing direct indexing using the plate on the front that mine doesn't have you would want to disengage this and you would do that by turning this outside knob you you know just rotating that down if you can't get it to turn there's an inside knob here well this inside knob does is it actually tightens up a lot on the inside of the spindle that locks this in place so this is in place now the it won't turn us it's locked so I unscrew this and we'll see how that works in a minute it loosens that up and now this should be turning there it goes it was just a bone right there little bit so there you go that that's how these two knobs work and we go ahead and pull this side off so there's just a a nut holding that in place pull the nut off okay so the outside wheel comes off first and there's a little pin in here that actually engages into this there's two shafts in here the inside one and outside so now we'll pull the outside one out you see that gear that here's what actually turns that lock nut on the inside and then I think we're going to leave that in place for right now because we might need to make sure as we take the spindle out that might come in handy so what I'm going to do is I'm going to make sure that I have the worm gear disengaged so I'm going to make sure that it's not turning that my nose is free spinning and I think I'm actually just go ahead while I got that apart I'm going to lock it in place so that it doesn't go anywhere there we go and now what we want to do is prepare to take the whole spindle out we'll start on the back there's a nut here they come a takes up the slop and this is a normally there will be a spanner wrench so it fit this two pins coming here I don't have the right sized spanner wrench but I got a punch that fits that and it's you know you can't come in here and get it going once it gets loose usually you can spin this off by hand now I'm going to actually engage the spindle right there to kind of get this going because this uh is tight so if you haven't had your part in a while you know you may have to really put some torque on that to get it going now I've had this one apart recently so it's coming apart pretty well but that comes right off and there is a thrust washer here and this is a notice there's some grooves in here those grooves will go to the inside and that's just old ruse to get some lubrication down in there and that's to take the thrust out of this keep that spindle from coming in and out take the end play out of it I'm gonna flip around to the front now and there should be three screws I'm missing one here but we're going to take these screws out and note that this whole assembly that's got this flange around here and this flange is actually pressed in here it's a pretty tight fit so it's not just going to come right out you're going to have to either use a press or I put some shock on it with a hammer so I don't really have a press here to do that with but I'm going to do for right now this we're going to turn it around and we're going to just knock it out but you never want to hit this directly with a hammer we want to put some something softer between there I block the wood a piece of brass I've got a piece of brass that should keep it from marring and I'm gonna take a pretty good side of hammer tap on that turn around this way hopefully you can see this piece coming out as I'm dabbing it there we go alright so I'm gonna actually zoom you guys in here let's you hopefully oh there's a little brass piece that goes in that lock it fell out there good I mostly me down in here hopefully you can see down in here you get a better feel for how this works down the inside let's see if we get you in there sometimes it helps to understand how the stuff is working so you're going to understand what's going on your time take it apart so if you remember there's two knobs on the side let me move that over to get see those in there the two knobs on the side when I turn this inside when the one that has the little holes in there those spanner wrench fits into you see that's actually spinning there's a little gear in here and what that gear is threaded on there thread it in there and when you tighten that up it actually locks the spindle in place you loosen that up and now the spindle will turn so it's locked and I can't really move that spindle in and out at all okay I'll loosen that up and now you see the cam moving up and down that cam engaging and disengaging so understand how these two functions work you know I got it down now lock it it's not moving loosen that up and now I can move it up and then lock it back in place all right so now let's go ahead and take all this inside parts out I was trying to take this knob off earlier but as you see that we actually want to wait to do that now so I'm going to go ahead we'd already loosen this nut we'll take it off take the outside knob off when you do that you can push here in this little gear will come all the way through that's the gear that actually up terms the cam on the other side and now this piece here will come out as well all right so we've got those out next we want to loosen this a big nut here what this is is this is a again a thrust washer or thrust a adjustment to take the linear movement out of this shaft coming in here and it just tightens up and puts a little pressure there you get this tight enough so that you don't have any in playing this but loose enough that this knob will turn the shaft will turn so to get this loosen up there's a screw on the front and the screw on the front tightens down on there to keep it from backing out so it's very important that you loosen this up before you try to screw this bolt or you trying to unscrew the dress will of cap here it's not going to want to come out and you'll just waste a lot of effort so now I'm just going to unscrew this and that comes out of here you see we have the little holes in here to let some oil get in there on that in thrust bearing so now back round over on this side there's this little piece right here it's just a little we're going to have to put this back in here and loosen up the nut because it was too tight alright so I've got that loose enough so now you see this moves and there's a kind of you can see that or not but there's a little piece in here that limits how far this camel move we need to take that out it's just got a a screw and then there's the limiter this little piece here all right so now this thing will turn beyond the range that's really designed to turn and what you have to do now is you have to position this so that this uh big worm gear lines up with the hole here and it comes out so if the canvas down either way it won't come out it gets in the right position it comes out all right getting close guys so now we're going to loosen up that nut on the inside that tightens everything up it comes off again there's a little thrust washer behind that now thrust washer but they wash your behind and that's just about ready to come out but first we have to remove this and to do that we're going to use a socket to come in here and loosen this nut so 7/8 inch size of mine and you do that this whole piece here comes out the gear comes out we'll just leave it there so I don't remember how it goes back together obviously if you're doing this and you need to clean it take all that apart clean it up real good and now the hem piece comes out and that's pretty much how to take this apart of the view things here so up here on the top I'll just move the camera you can see that little bit better so up here on the top you see there's this little knob and when you push that forward it engages the the direct index plate on the front but you in mine doesn't have if you have to take this apart there's two screws here this outside screw just goes in this has just a little notch in it and there's a screw that goes in there and that keeps this from coming out the second screw here there is a ball bearing and a spring in there and what you have is in this shaft in here there's a couple little D tents a little little holes in there that that ball bearing will go into and then we'll catch it in one of these two two positions I'm not going to take it out but that's how that works so you'll have to take both of these out and be careful when you take this out that you get both the screw in the ball bearing and then the other thing that you can do is this whole piece here will rotate around to whatever angle you want and to loosen that up there's two bolts here you loosen these up and then you can adjust this to whatever angle again if yours is real dirty and cruddy been round a while coming here and clean these ways up to a good first you know get a wire brush or something like that in there to get it all the rust and stuff out oil it up real good and you may have to again use a soft blue hammer or something to kind of tap it to get it out but once you get this cleaned up make sure you old it real good and it should go back together really nice alright so that's pretty much a disassembly process it's all apart now and to put it back together it's pretty much the reverse of what would just show so we'll go through those steps real quickly for you first thing I'm going to do is we're going to put this cam piece back in you know make sure as you're doing this you know give it some good lube roll it up real good this lot of moving parts in here we want to make sure everything's old and there's no better time to do that then while you have it apart and I'm just using the lightweight machine over here to do that so we'll put the cam back on we're going to put our little piece here that limits the travel and we find the right screw for that one and then we'll put the screw back in here so while we're right here at this point let's go ahead and put the lock gear back inside here and remember there is a washer that goes in between there's are a little thrust washer here you know that's kind of good ol on it we'll put that slide both of those back over and thread that back on and I don't want it tight I just want it loose right now all right next is the worm here and again there's a little washer in here but notice on this washer there's a little pinhole in there and that's going to be real important you won't put that on there it goes in here but this pinhole will actually engage there's a pin on the on this cam pieces in there and that pinhole has to line up in that hot pin so make sure that when you put this back together that it goes back together so we'll put this in here again we may have to get it lined up again you know if you'll only go in when it's lined up okay tell you what I like to kind of push that washer out when it goes in here and that gives me something some room in here to make sure I get that pin lined up tight quarters hopefully my big heads not in the way get a little screwdriver to kind of push on the bottom okay that's got the pin on that there and that's going all the way down all right so that's in now and we'll go ahead and put the thrust washer back in or thrust the plug I'm gonna put some on there while I got it apart and when you tighten this up what you want to do is tighten it up until it's just touching and you can take your other hand over here and turn this knob and you want you want to get it so that there's no in and out play but you can easily turn this knob okay if you turn it too far you're going to have some play in there we don't want that play in there that's the whole purpose of it is to take that linear movement out but again we don't want it tight enough this is making it difficult to use that feels good so now I'm going to tighten up this little screw here and that right there will lock that thrust piece in place so that this is going to be worked real good so now that we got all this assemble it's very important now that we remember to put this little gear back home to the side you know the first time that I ever did them with these I got it all back together and then realize that I had forgotten to put on this little piece here that has to be tightened up from the inside and had to take the whole thing back apart again so learn from my mistake very important here we're just going to put this back in there is an ole hole here on the top of this with a little screw that comes out you can put a hole in make sure that's up that goes in here we take the nut tighten it up and using our socket wrench to reach down in here we'll just tighten that up that's good and tight so now let's make sure that the cam is back out of the light and we will put the spindle back in oh you got us apart go ahead and take an opportunity and hold it up real good when I share this funny old and this up just squirt honey oil in here can't have too much older when you send it guys there's three holes on this thing make sure the one you want up is up on mine there's actually a little witness mark on the bottom that was there if yours didn't have one you may want to put one on there we take it apart just take a punch or something and we're going to kind of just put this in here come on flip this over and I'll to it back straight up and down and what I want to do is I want to try to make sure that these three holes are lined up now sometimes you can take a little taper punch and kind of you know get those kind of roughly where you want it I'm gonna take this off low and we're here start with it how did that start and then I'm going to take the actual screws and make sure that they start before I hammer this thing all the way down because if they're not lined up just right you're going to have to knock it all the way back out is that when it's starting I know from experience that this one has to go down with deeper before it will actually start so I'm going to take my brass rod here we'll handle let's take those screws make sure they're going to go and that side is starting that I decided already started we're going to drive that home I can feel it in his hip bottom so go ahead and tighten these up you're good and tight okay hi next thing we want to do is go ahead and get the thrust washer and nut on the back here and again on this thrust washer there's some old grooves make sure that that is the side that goes down I'm going to put some oil on that we'll put that in there and then the washer I mean the nut goes on the top of that and this star is on here next step we're going to reinsert the piece here that tightens the nut up on the inside okay I can feel that tightening so we're good that one goes in first with another side and there's this piece here that goes through the little hole on that right that little gear engages their back around this side now we will put the outside gnaw home again there's a little pin in there it only goes in one spot and where is that spot there it is wrong way there we go okay that's working very good all right we'll go ahead and put the lock knob back in again make sure you got this little brass piece we don't want steel on steel going in there put that in and tighten this up all right down on this shaft here and this year right now it's not engaged and then when the cam comes up those gears engage there too and that's we're doing the spiral milling again you can stop that by using this little pin here and the front of your index plate all right so next we need to reassemble our piece here the whole spiral gears and if you notice again in here there's there's this a bevel gear that terms at 90 degrees so there's the two-piece gear goes here with the bevel gear going down I've got the shaft out so I got some bigger ring and then the other bevel gear will then drop down in there notice we got a little boss coming off one side that side goes to the outside here okay so next you come in here we're dropping the pin in place it's got that holding in now and then the driveshaft goes in here there's a key on this inside here so when you measure that lines up they've up this whole map there we go go ahead and put these nuts back home turn in now this one if iPhone where there's some pins and your guys that kind of index this into place make sure our gears are meshing like they're supposed to that's it right there and there's three screws to hold all this in place all right we're getting real close guys now at this point we want to put our little love guard back on so there's two screws that hold that in place and now we're ready to put the index play back home we go there's three screws that hold that in the course depending on how many segments you're needing to index there's three different plates that you can put on here with different hole patterns in it and of course you can swap those out whenever necessary all right so now to keep this point from turning we engage this pin on the back and it goes in one of the holes there now that's a firmly in place cut the segment on the clip there's a little steel washer that goes on the bottom there next we put in our index lever figure out which a row you want at the end go ahead and get it in one of the hole patterns there this little love slotted bushing goes on next all about brass washer and then that the hold it all in place I think the last step here is we're going to put our little ankle gage back home here again there's a pin that holds that in place drop it down in there and tighten up the screw so there you go guys there's the technique for taking apart a brown sharp type biting hit putting it back together again hopefully somebody out there will find this useful I realize that many of you probably have no use for this video whatsoever but just filling in a request from a couple of guys and hopefully it'll come in handy if you liked what you saw please hit the subscribe button if you got any comments please leave them I'll read all my comments and try to reply back if you have any questions maybe I can give you a hand if you're having some problems with yours and thank you again for everybody for watching you

Channel: Keith Rucker - VintageMachinery.org

Views: 66,056

Rating: 4.9335179 out of 5

Keywords: Machine Shop, Machinist, Brown & Sharpe (Organization), Indexing Head (Product Category), VintageMachinery.org

Id: DXef8SfT8fw

Length: 48min 37sec (2917 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 23 2014