Kearney & Trecker Low Lead Attachment for Cutting Spiral Gears

[Music] hello keith rocker here at vintage machinery.org guys today got a new little attachment for my horizontal milling machine my kearney trekker model h 3h horizontal mill picked it up this past week i actually made a trade on this some time back and i went up to tell city indiana to meet with my friends dan and neal warner who i've known for a long time they have wamco up there which is a machine shop in that area and found out that they had this attachment for that fits my middle machine they didn't have a machine that it fits and we did a little horse trading uh they ended up we ended up swapping some stuff back and forth and i ended up with this lead attachment so i found out about this from a viewer who had actually done some trading with deal and dan and neal to uh gave this to him he had acquired it somewhere along the way and didn't need it uh did some trading with neil and dan they didn't really need it but they put it on the shelf but he informed me that he had that dan and neal had it unfortunately i've known dan and neal for a long time they've been good friends i reached out to them and like i said we were able to work out a deal so first off what is it this is a low lead attachment that goes on my horizontal milling machine and this is the box that holds a bunch of gears that allows you to cut spiral gears on a horizontal milling machine now to cut a spiral gear you've probably seen me cut spur gears before but to cut a spiral gear the actual gear blank has to rotate as the table is moving along to get that spiral in it and this box basically through a bunch of change gears uh goes it ties into the the the table the the lead screw on the table that's turning and it creates a motion in the dividing head that actually turns the part while you're going fairly complicated part so i knew that this was there but i also knew that it was missing a lot of stuff but it is the main casting uh and i i don't know exactly what i'm getting into here guys i don't have a whole lot tied up in this so you know even if it turned out to be a boat anchor i'm really not that out that much but i'm hoping that i'm going to be able to salvage up the parts that i need or even make the parts that i need to get this thing back up and going so let's uh let's let you kind of look at what we got i'm gonna be kind of going through this thing figuring out as i go i don't i've never used one i've never seen one in person i guess i've seen one i've never actually put one on or anything like that worked on one so i'm really not sure i'm getting into let's go for the journey and find out and here comes mary ann to check on my progress so let's take a closer look at this this actually mounts up on the end of the table there's a couple of pins and there's a couple of mounting screws here this just bolts on to the end of the table and on that table again we have the the main lead screw has a piece that comes out it's a spline piece and it fits up inside of this socket right here and it rotates so as the table's turning it rotates it and uh inside the box uh there's a set of worm gears that go in here there's two worm gears there's actually with this low lead attachment there were three different sets of worm gears that came with the kit now i'm missing all the worm gears i know that i knew that going in and that's a problem that's a major problem but fortunately i know someone that has one of these that has at least one set of worm gears and has the set of worm gears that i need to be able to make the gear that i'm after so while i'm definitely on the lookout for the worm gears that go in this i really like to find all three sets i've got access to some worms that i can borrow and on the back side here there's a door that opens up and on the inside here you got some a place to put some change gears uh to get your gearing just right coupled with the worm gears to to basically gear everything down so that it's rotating a shaft that comes through here and this shaft and i'm missing the shaft i think i can make that if i can't find one but there's a shaft that goes from this to the dividing head that actually rotates the the dividing head as you're going so again i know i'm missing parts and i know that this thing has been into uh there's screws that are out down here on this plate i don't know what i'm going to get into like i said this is somewhat of a crap shoot i know that going into it but these things are pretty hard to come by so i i decided to go ahead and grab it while i can and i'm hoping that i can either round up the parts i need or what have you now the change gears i've got some of the change gears that go with this so there were 17 individual change gears that uh basically mount up on here in different ratios coming out of here you would mount these in and it would basically um give you the right speeds up here i've got this stack here and i found these these actually came from my friend ron grundy ron's up in milwaukee used to work for knt has a bunch of k t parts and i whenever i found out about this i contacted him and i said hey see if you've got any of these parts laying around and he was able to find this many of the gear so there's one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven gears here originally there were 17 in the set so i'm still missing a few but i'm off to a good start the good news on these spur gears is that i can make these if i can't find them i can make them i can make them on my device on the middle machine dividing head it does not require a leads attachment to do this because that's just a straight spur gear i've made many of these so you know if i don't have the ones i need for this job i can make them also my friend that has the worm gear he has a full set of change gears so in the meantime until i can either find or make the ones i need i can borrow the ones i need for the job i have coming up so i want a big thank you to ron uh who like i said dug these up for me that's gonna be a huge help and i'll just mention real quick that ron has a bunch of parts for k and t milling machines he's got some other machine parts too for different machines if you're looking for any parts particularly for k t stuff send me a message i'll hook you up with ron and maybe maybe he can help you out so before we do anything else i want to take this over and just make sure that it's going to mount up and fit onto my machine so one thing i do know is i've been able to look the serial number up on this this low lead attachment was made for a model either a 2k or two ck or 3ch milling machine now i have a model 3h not a 3 ch the ch was basically a slightly improved upon version of the the 3ch was a slightly improved version of the older ch so technically it's for a more modern machine however i'm nearly certain that this one is going to still fit on my machine there was not a whole lot of major differences between that the the model h's and the model chs so but i do want to make sure everything's going to fit now the way this mounts on is uh there are two dowel pins that go up into pins on the end of my table there are four bolts one two three four that mount to the table and this is kind of mounts in there so you got the alignment pins and then the bolts that go on there what i want to do is take these over and just make sure it's going to fit into my alignment holes and make sure that everything's just going to line up and also that this shaft is going to fit in there uh once we do that i'm going to bring it back over here to the table and start tearing into it see what's going on because i know it's been taken apart before i want to just check everything out make sure there's nothing screwed up or missing inside this thing that's going to give me more trouble down the road let's go over to the mill machine so this is the end of the table where this attachment mounts up on so i've got an alignment hole here alignment pin hole here an alignment pin here there's holes here that the screws go in to bolt it on there there should be another screw down here i think this cover plate is covering up another screw hole down here i need to take this cover plate off and uh that should give me access to that main screw that uh will tie into it'll fit up into that spline on the on the lead attachment so there's just three socket cap screws holding this on let me pull these out there we go there we go and yes so there's our hole that's a through hole bolt comes through there's a slot there for an auxiliary shaft that i don't think gets used in this but it can be used and this is a spline this is interesting we got a nut on the end and there's a little spacer and a gear in here and i don't think that this gear actually interfaces with this particular attachment so just for the record k t had multiple things that could be driven off of this screw different attachments so this is just one of the things that are on there i don't think that this gear comes into play because this basically that whole attachment just slides up over this blind hole there it comes all right let me go get that attachment and just see if it'll slide up on here all right so i got that spline down there actually in the wrong hole there we go there's the spline and pull back out just a little bit get the alignment pin alignment pin and it's going to go up on there i need to clean these pins up so it'll slide up on there a little bit better but it looks like everything aligns which is exactly what i wanted to see let's just i'll open up give me access all right that is good news so that means that this will fit on this machine so i'm going to like i said take it back over here i noticed when i was carrying this over here as i was walking i heard some rattling there's something loose in this case down here i don't know what that is but that may not be a good sign let's take it back over the bench and start taking it apart and see we can come up with all right back over to the bench i'm going to open this up so we got the covers here these are where the the worm gear and the worm itself go into and i'm going to show a picture this is a picture i found on on practical machinists it shows the worm gear sets and change gears that the full set for this just so you can kind of see what these pieces look like and like i said i'm on the lookout for those worm gear so if anybody has anything that looks like that laying around their shop and don't know what it goes to let me know because i'd be very interested in acquiring them i know that there's some out there somewhere probably sitting on shelf somewhere nobody even knows what they go to and i would love to salvage them and save them and put them back to use rather than just getting scrapped somewhere so let's pull these covers off and see what's inside there so we've got some nuts here that go up on some studs and these plates are here are designed to come off where you can change those gears out yeah it's just a roof tight fit yeah there's a flange on the inside that presses up inside of this and again that's where that worm um goes in you got a little bronze bushing that that rides on as well as a pressure plate there to take up any movement into end and yeah there's a there's a key up in here that that fits up onto and drives some other pieces in here inside this case when i'm turning that though i don't see anything turning up here i think that it should be turning this shaft so there's something disconnected in there and let's go ahead and take this plate off on the back it's kind of like the other one there's just a you swap those that worm and worm gear [Applause] like i said there were three different sets with different ratios and you could install them either way so basically there was six possible combinations that you could put these things in here so you could either put the worm gear in the worm or the worm and the worm gear so that was two possible combinations and then three different sets uh for different ratios and then your change gears up here gave you the rest of the ratios let's see and there's a bunch of uh hardware floating around down here in the bottom of this that's probably what i heard rattling so we got some more there's some screws some nuts socket cap screws [Applause] that's a little discouraging i i don't know what all that goes to but that's what i heard rattling around inside of there whenever i was uh moving this around while ago i'm gonna set all that aside so we got let's see i guess just lose this this little uh like i said you'd have a gear that came off of here that drove to this one and there was another gear behind it that drove to this one so there was four gears that you would put in here this one is just an idler this one should be geared into uh this shaft here but it's not turning right now so again there's something in there going on and between the different ratios again between the gears you could get different rates of spinning up here on this piece it was adjustable to put those change gears on them we'll just go ahead and pull that out okay that looks like the set screws that our cap screws that held that cover on with this cover let's see if i can get that to come out all right so what do we got going on here there's a a gear here i'm noticing there's a set of bevel gears in there which tells me there's a reversing mechanism and there's this lever here on the side yeah and i bet yeah this is a left hand and right hand so i imagine that right now it was in the center position which is neutral so let me uh now it's gotten tight so i think let me get a wrench right and turn that yeah it's all engaged now okay that makes me feel a lot better i am going to put this back together let's see it's marked 40 right here it's marked 40 on the top so i'm going to assume which is probably dangerous that it goes in there that those marks line up and we've got these screws here that should tighten that down all right that is all tightened back down i'm confident that that's the way it needs to be i came over and i cleaned everything up real good i just ran a reamer down these dowel holes just to clean the gunk out or anything else i ran some taps into tapped holes and slid up on here and it slid up on a lot better i'm still just kind of having to use the screws to pull it in tight so there is one screw on this side just a socket cap screw and then there are two on this side i've just got one in right now and i'm having to kind of do one side and then do the other to keep it lined up on those dowel pins uh so i'll just tighten this up it starts getting a little bit tight and i'll come back over here and when i get done there's a third screw that goes in the bottom and there's actually two on this side over here so we've got a few more to put in but we'll get them just these two by the dial pins get them snugged up first then the rest of them should just go right in well it's looking good here guys i've got it mounted on the machine now and i've had a chance to kind of play around with things and just kind of see what we're missing so i found a picture in one of my books that i have to kind of show this thing set up and i see two things that i know that i'm missing besides the worm gear and a couple of change gears which again i can get around that temporarily although i am looking for those parts but the big things that i need really the main thing is is there again is a drive shaft that goes from right here up into the lead attachment that a worm gear goes into so it's flying on one end for a year to fit into there's some type of bearing mechanism in there to support it and then it ties in this is just normally a crank on here this is broken on mine but there's a crank here that you could turn and that would actually turn the chuck you know in between divisions so this is basically what drives the whole mechanism that i need uh at the very least i need to find someone that's got one that i can uh get some pictures of some dimensions i imagine i can make that part i'm not too worried about that i'd love to find an original but i imagine i can make that part the other thing that's missing on this is uh there's a linkage that kind of goes down up here at the bottom so over here there's a lever that he engages and it moves this rod out actually this disengages i think more anything else but it is connected into a stop lever over here that has some dogs that will trip the table so whenever it gets to the end of your your stroke it moves this dog this handle back and forth and at the same time when it hits that it's gonna you have this out it will push that in and disengage the the box here as well and again i think that's something that i can probably you know fabricate up if i can't find an original it's just some brackets that mount in here and a rod that goes back to this thing again i'd like to find someone that has an original that i can get some pictures of and kind of look at and uh dimensions all that kind of stuff so that i can see what i got to make now one question i do have on my dividing head this is a model h dividing head it's the same dividing head that mates with this lead attachment but again i mentioned this piece on the back here this normally it had a handle on here again mine is broken it was got broken when i got it that would let you turn this by hand where you could manually turn your part up here you know while you had it set with it for a particular division i don't know what's going on with it but i have never been able to get this thing to turn it's frozen up i imagine there's some type of lock in here that's got it locked but i can't find anything in the documentation that talks about it i can't find anything that's obviously okay hey i need to do this and you know i've tried putting some pressure on it without just you know beating on it or something and damaging something i'm not sure what's going on with this so if anybody's got a clue on how to free this part up down here i would greatly appreciate any advice anybody's got like i said it's probably something simple that i'm just missing but uh i don't know what it is so i need to get that figured out as well this dividing head um while it's kind of dirty and whatever it's from what i can tell it's seen very little use over the years so i don't know why this would be froze up unless there's just something going on that i'm not figuring out anyway any advice on that i'd appreciate it send me an email i thought i'd show you a little bit more detail on this right here i've been studying this a little while and doing a little bit of homework and what have you like i've mentioned before the the gears the worms i can get around right now because i know someone that has what i need and he'll let me borrow i'd love to get those parts for this obviously but i can at least get the ones i need to make the gears that i need but my real hiccup right now is this shaft that goes from the dividing head into the lead attachment and you can see a picture here showing that shaft basically we got a spline coming out of this it's one inches one inch across the uh the outside the largest diameter and it's a six spline pattern and you can see that this shaft fits up over that and basically goes through this there's a bearing block in here and then your gear which has that same one inch spline let me get something behind that where you can maybe see it a little bit better same one inch spline pattern six splines one inches across from the outside diameter there that uh that gear fits up inside of here and actually that same gear it fits right on there so it's the same spline pattern so i looked in my parts manual and this is the this is the breakout for that whole assembly so here's the gear there's a little stub shaft here that's got this flying on one side spot on the other and it's that got some bearing journals that fits inside this piece here which mounts inside and you got some bronze bushings that ride here and then it basically goes back to a spline there's a coupler a shaft and a coupler and basically i'm missing this whole assembly if anybody out there happens to have one laying around their shop i would love to get my hands on it if you don't have a need for it otherwise i think i can make most of this uh my biggest challenge that i've had so far is is the coupler that fits up over this i have no way really to machine those inside notches on a long coupling and i have looked and looked and looked online trying to find a six flying coupler i can find one for 1 8 inch across the uh those those outside diameter but i can't find one for one inch honestly if i could find a coupler that fits up over this uh i could probably i think i can make the rest because i can make the spline on the inside on the horizontal mill and dividing head for a gear to fit up on i just don't have that coupler to go there so again if anybody knows of a source for a six spline one inch outside diameter coupler and uh i i would be most appreciative if someone could point me in the right direction because so far i have not been able to find that anyway that's kind of where we are here i just thought i'd give a little update update on that because that's my that's my holdback right now this whole assembly before we get out of here another quick update um i mentioned earlier that this whole drive system down here was froze up and i couldn't figure out how to get it free and i just finally got over here and i literally had to take this whole piece off of the dividing head and when i got down in here this thing was just filled with gunk where the oil and stuff had just dried up over the years i gave it a good cleaning uh did some other things in there just to kind of free it up and look at there that is exactly what's supposed to happen so uh the way this dividing hit is normally in normal mode you would tighten that ring up and that that would lock it and that would let you rotate the dividing head like you normally do but when you're working in the with cutting the leads of course this is tied into the table as the table moves there's a that rod down the end spinning it goes through all these different gears to rotate the entire chuck if you look the chuck is actually moving up here very slowly but that's what gives you that lead is by this whole thing doing and when you back back out this thing has got a is really set up where there's hardly any backlash in this at all when you back back out you end up right back where you were you index your to your next point and then you go back in there and you cut that that uh tooth and that's going to slowly twist the chuck and that's what gives you that spiral gear being cut so anyway i just thought i'd show that but we got it freed up everything is like it should be now and i'm really excited about that that has never worked since i got this uh dividing head but um good cleaning and a good just going through it and and doing a few little odds and ends we got it where it is uh working like it should be like there i can turn it by hand up here a little more leverage in this direction uh and like i said when you're not cutting leads you just lock it in place right there and that keeps you from turning it so thought i'd show that update and with that guys i think that is going to be a wrap on this video uh we've i'm really excited you can probably tell to get this new lead attachment and yes we got some issues with it that we got to work with yes it's missing a few parts most of we can get around i got to rig up this drive shaft if i can find me a coupler i think i can do it or maybe i'll get lucky and find the whole part there i need some worm gears and worm gear sets in there but again i can borrow those temporarily and but hopefully eventually i'll be able to find some got my dividing head freed up we're getting really close to maybe being able to try to cut some spiral gears which i'm really excited about so anyway thanks for watching guys as always just one thing i'll mention here real quick is i am wrapping this video up today it is christmas eve 2020. uh this video will go live on christmas day which i try to publish videos on friday so if you're watching this around christmas time or on christmas day merry christmas thank you guys out there for uh watching my channel and supporting me through just viewing my channel over the years is greatly appreciated um a lot of you guys are like family to me now even though i've not met many of you i've gotten to know many of you through through emails and messages and what have you and it's been a lot of fun anyway merry christmas have a great new year and with that we'll catch you on the next video thanks for watching [Music] do you

Channel: Keith Rucker - VintageMachinery.org

Views: 49,266

Rating: 4.9797816 out of 5

Keywords: Machine Shop, Machinist, Milling Machine, Restoration, Vintage Machinery, Metalworking, how to run a mill, Keith Rucker, VintageMachinery.org, kearney and trecker, kearney & trecker, horizontal milling machine, spiral gears, low lead attachment, lead attachment, helical gear cutting, spiral gear cutting, K & T, K&T, 3H Milling Machine

Id: 9SPkYUy6xU4

Length: 29min 57sec (1797 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 25 2020