Machining Dividing Head Index Plates

hello Keith truck here vintage machine without org so got a little interesting project I think you guys will enjoy gonna be working on the machine shop today a while back I acquired a model age Koerner Trekkie dividing head and I've got a dividing job coming up it's going to actually be in a little year repair job that I've got to do and the problem I've got is that the dividing head only came with one index plate and there were a total of seven plates that Katie offered for they're dividing head three of them probably do the majority of the indexing and that was there was really three plates that came with this app and then there was an option to buy four additional plates for some special indexing needs but I only have one of them I have plate number two which is uh what is this got a 21 to 33 holes in it our divisions in it and I think the one I'm needing is plate one I can't remember what exactly which so what it is I don't have the plate I need been looking for some of these on the eBay for a while now there's dividing head plates when they're all the time but never seem to be the ones that I need so we're just going to make some and I can tell you this is not the first time I've actually made a dividing head plate back years ago when I worked in the machine shop we had the same thing we had dividing head didn't have the right plate so we made the plate er I made the plate that we need to do it needed for that job and I just went ahead and made the whole plate while I was at it and basically going to do something very similar here so the plate that I've got is let's see this is five and 3/8 inches in diameter it has a hole in the middle here that's bored out and that is about it it's inch and 3/4 the plate is 1/4 inch thick and what I want to do right now is I want to get the actual blank plates made up about any holes in them but actually get the plates themselves made have those dimensions the outside diameter the inside diameter in the proper thickness and to do that I've got some of these plates here and these were some cut-offs from a laser cutting job and these were basically they were cutting some plates and cutting out these holes these plates are eight and a half inches roughly in diameter a little bit smaller than that actually a good bit larger than the plate that we need but it would give us a piece of material to start with and these were free the price was right which is why I'm using it the thickness on these is a little bit thickness again I need a hat a quarter-inch thick and these what were these these are measuring 315 thousandths and I need 250,000 so we got a little bit of material to take off of them so game plan we're going to do is we're going to put this disc in the lathe chuck it up in the regular chuck then go ahead and drill a hole I've got a drill bit going up to inch and a half actually have an inch and 3/4 drill bit but I think what I want to do is a little bit undersized and that's the next size smaller I have and then we'll bore it out to the exact right size because that inside diameter is critical then I'll go ahead and put face off to one side then we're going to flip it around I'm going to use a little trick I'm going to show you guys you have to stay tuned to see what it is to mount this on that side and then we'll go ahead and face the other side to thickness and in the process of all this - we'll have to reduce the diameter down turn the diameter down so it's gonna be 2 operations on the lathe or two setups on the lathe several operations with I've got to work on both sides of this disc and we'll get them down while I'm at it I picked up six of these big discs again there were a total of seven plates that K&T made I'm gonna go ahead and make six new blanks and up and later on we'll get the holes put in these and while we're at it we're just to make a complete set and then I'll have everything I need from now on so that's the game plan let's get over to the lathe and we'll get started on it so I've got my disc here mounted now in the lathe I turn my dolls around in here actually put in the the outside dripping jaws to grip this disc to get out look there where I need to and we're just going to come in here right now punch a hole and drill it out to inch and a half like I said then we'll board out inch and three-quarters start with a center hole it's enough to get my hole started my first hole is going to be 1/2 inch the second hole will be seven eight and my final hole is going to be inch so now we need to bore out about another 250,000 got my boring bar set up here and we're just going here and get it done and I just measurably callipers it needs to be it's a pretty precision fit but it's not anything that's got to be super super critical but I would like to get it within a thousandth but I think I can measure that the calipers just fine that is right on the money if anything it's a half a thousand Thunder I'll tell you what I made this one another spring pass through there and call it good enough the next step here is we want to go ahead and put a light facing on this side just to clean it up get a good machined surface on it I think I'm just going to use the boring bar to do that it's already set up in there I should be able to bring it right out to me I'm going to stop a little bit shy of getting to the edge just because I don't want to get into my my dolls here on the chuck and that's all going to be machined off anyway so we'll get out here close to the edge and just stop it let's crank it up a notch on the speed too much all right so we've got the inside boards the proper diameter we've got this one side faced again went shy just shy being all the way but again that's going to be turned off very happy with the surface finish on that man that turned out really nice so now I think what I'm going to do is I'm just going to go ahead and repeat this process on the other five discs that I have since I'm set up for it and once I get those done I'll do them off-camera we'll come back to you and I will show you the rest of the process so we're moving right along on here we've got all six of these plates now board and faced on one side finished looks good on all of them so next step here is we need to flip these over and mount this on this flat side and turn the outside diameter and face off inside of this thing so to do that we're going to actually use a couple of tricks here including a just a friction mount as well as a glue mount to get this done and we'll take you to the lathe now and we're going to get our a jig or little faceplate jig made up specifically for this job so first thing I need to do is I need to make a piece to use as kind of a bearing a pressure plate I guess you'd say to press my part up against this paste place I'm going to be cutting and to make that out of it just got a piece of plastic basically here what I'm going to do is I'm going to face off one side and we're going to hollow out the center which is where that hub will come up through in case it does come out a little bit proud it's only going to because it's going to be pressing up where that bore is inch and 3/4 inside of this isn't going to matter anyway it's not going to be touching any so I'm going to hollow that out and then we'll flip it around we'll face it off and we'll put the center hole in there and that way we can come in and press this piece up against the plate on the fixture I'm going to make and that pressure will help hold it in place that's all arranged in 3/4 let's just put on long and I think I do want to go a little bit go back to Center and go back out I'll be found for the inside the flip it around a little chamfer on this that's a big camper and finally we're going to put a pretty good-sized Center in here that will be what this is the pressure on this so the next thing I need to do is make the little faceplate jig chuck whatever you want to call it that we're going to be mounting these two and to make that out of I just got a chunk of aluminum here and I'm not even going to bother cutting it's just short enough as it is what I'm going to do is we're going to basically face it off I'm going to turn a little boss in the center of this to match the inch and three-quarter inch holes that I've got drilled the pieces will then come up over this and we'll show you're going to hold it in place in a minute it's part by facing it we'll better run out in it I'm not too worried about that really all I'm worried about is a good face to mount this on so we're not going to take it out until we finish so we're not even to worry about a little bit of run out it's not important we'll turn everything to be running true it's the birth is for the call so one other thing before we get done because we're going to be use this as a glue Chuck and actually using some glue to hold this in place I want a mill a couple of our cut a couple of little grooves in the face of this just to give that glue of some place to go when I press it all in there so let's go ahead and do that alright guys so now comes the fun so we've got our Chuck made opposed it's going to be a glue Chuck and what we're going to be doing we're actually going to be using super glue we're going to put that on the face of this well put it on and then basically mount the part in here and a super glue if you never use it as an extremely strong glue it's an amazing glue actually but one of the nice things about it is that it's easily to reverse a little bit of heat so I can take a little propane torch a little heat on there that'll break that bond and it should come right back off I've used this type of a glue Chuck before but quite honestly never on a part this big and while in theory it should work fine I have a little bit of concern because we are going to be removing a lot of metal and I guess my biggest concern is is that if I get in a hurry and my part gets hot I could actually create enough heat to break the bond before I get through with it so we're going to be taking small cuts and taking our time on this but this theory or this method does work and it works extremely well particularly when you want to mount a flat surface to another flat surface for machining and don't really have a good way of holding it so as long as you take light cuts and don't build up too much heat it tends to work really well so we're going to going to take the superglue and we're going to just put a good bit of mount right there on the face of this Chuck and I've cleaned this the surfaces both of these surfaces very well with mineral spirits and then with some lacquer thinner all right we're going to give that a little bit of time to bond we've got everything mounted up now the the disc is glued in place I've got my little spacer that I made here my pressure plate is putting pressure up against this and I use that to help hold it in place while the glue has been drying and I think what I'm going to do is while I've got all this set up I'm going to go ahead and turn the outside diameter down let that be my first step and then once that is done we'll take the disc out the glue should hold it in place and we'll face off the other side so that's the game plan let's see how it works again we're going to be taking light cuts this is going to take a while but I think it's important that we don't get in too big of a hurry you know you can actually use this set up with just this friction plate to do that what we're doing but because of the facing cut we need to glue in there as well so we've been working away at this and getting down kind of close I'll spit out a ways to go little ways to go after some trial and error we determined that about 60,000 about what I can make in a pass without causing a problem I decided to put the full mist on here just to kind of keep things hold it cool and I think we working well we're going to take a measurement after this and I figure we're out we're sixteen over our mark be real close here about four and a half like we're about a quarter of a thousands over we're going to call that good enough we'll clean up that side of the thief and put a damper on now we're going to see how well this glue still holding seems to be on there I'm taking really light cuts here we're not going to get in a hurry at all for my coolness ball hopefully a little cooling action going on here as well I think I will speed it up a little bit though I got 45,000 take off put my dial indicator on here the and I think we'll just do about 10,000 and to finish it up and put a light chamfer this ball final step here is we need to heat this up to break the bond of the CA glue or the superglue ideally I'd use a propane torch for this but I don't seem to have one out here at the museum I'm going to bring one from home tomorrow when I finish up these but for now we'll just use the settling torch so we'll let this Chuck cool down a little bit I'm going to come in here and we'll take up and just put a real light face on that clean it all back up again and we'll glue another piece on and go to the next part a lot of work to make a big washer but we're making short work of it here that one is pretty much done after I took it off I just handy bird the inside of that there's still a little bit of glue residue on here at home I actually have some dissolver or a thinner whatever you want to call it for super glue I'm gonna bring that up here tomorrow and I can wipe that down it should clean right up I use a lot of CA glue my woodturning and I've got some stuff too should make that a little bit easier to take apart so I also got some activator I think we'll bring that up in the spray it on the back side of the the part of the glue up the Chuck and then spray the the activator on the other side may be able to bond a little bit better and quicker but anyway we got one down five more to go I'll do the other five off-camera and we'll bring you back at the end so I finished machining all six of the blanks came out fine here I will say that as we went through these I was able to kind of slowly just playing with the settings on the lathe and you know not wanting to push it with that glue Chuck where we would break the seal but at the same time trying to get my speeds and feeds up and my as fast as I could get the job done and I was able to get the lathe running a good bit faster and without any problems and you know after the first couple it was taking me about 45 minutes really start to finish to finish these things out so to turn down the disc and then face off the side and then take it off the Chuck and you know put the new one on the Chuck so spin it up quite a bit and the last last for I think I did about two and a half hours and knocked everything out pretty easily you know this is one of those jobs that if I had do it again I probably would have just said of trying to use a piece of blank material that you know basically got for free I might have just gone ahead and paid a little bit extra money and had somebody burn these out where I didn't have to drill the hole I just had to bore the hole out and then that were the outside diameter didn't have so much material to cut off it was a quite tedious job on the lathe you know it wasn't hard work it just took a while and we could have sped that up considerably and for no more than it probably would have cost to get these burn out that probably would have been a a really the way to go about it but you know I the way I did it worked and hey I use free material even better so how the disc this is a dividing heads it's the current corrector dividing head that uh these will all go on and basically this disc will fit right up on that little boss in there if it's in this sleeve of course there will be three screws the original here has three screws that this will screw in place and then you tighten it up there's a little clamp or a ring around it that tightens everything in place and you know I checked them all out they fit great so the next step here is obviously to put all the holes in these we got six blanks and they each will have different hole patterns put in them and how we go about doing that so I told you at the beginning that I have made a index plate one time before and the way that I put the holes and that is I use a rotary table and I calculated the angle for between each hole depending on the number of divisions so you know you take the number of divisions that you won't divide it by 360 which is how many degrees is in a circle and that would tell you the angle to dial in between each one of those holes and basically I just did that for each of the hole patterns I had a list there that I worked off of this was back before we had spreadsheets and computers so I did it all by hand basically and wrote it all out and I would dial that in on the rotary table and drill the hole dial the next one drill the hole driving actually drilled a hole all the way around and I did the hole hole patterns and it was a very tedious job as you can imagine in fact it was quite nerve-wracking you only got one shot if you missed your your angle you're pretty much you're screwed you had to start over so actually when I did it I had somebody in the shop with me and I would I would dial it in on the rotary table I would look at my number I then would let another person verify that I had the number right and then I would look at it again and then drill the hole so and I could very easily do it the same way it's quite time-consuming as you could imagine - but with the rotary table method is definitely a way to do this and if I was in a hurry and need to get one done I could very easily do this on my rotary table and knock out it's just time consuming it takes a lot of time but I think what we're going to do is is we're going to do this a little bit easier and I've got a buddy of mine that operates a CNC milling machine where he works and I've taught with him and what we can do is he's just going to program the different hole patterns into the milling machine will he'll mount these on something locate the center of this and then basically just let the middle machine go pick all those holes in there and you know that will take the human factor the human error factor out of things and hopefully it'll give us a very accurate plate and be able to it much quicker and probably more accurately than dialing it in by hand so that's the plan particularly with six different plates with six different hole patterns you know it would take a really long time to do this by hand doable yes and you know like I said if this was a rush job I didn't have time to wait on them that would probably be what I did but you know we're going to we're going to take the easy way out and let him drill all these holes so I'm going to put these in the mail to them and send them off and hopefully here before too terribly long we'll get them back and we'll have a complete set of all seven index plates for my Kearney trekker dividing head and with that hopefully I won't have anything ever come in that I won't be able to divide if I need to well that about be a wrap hopefully you got to see some new things here see a glue Chuck how many people ever seen a glue chat before it's actually trick that uh I've used before it's been a while and I have to be honest that I was refreshed of that memory of using a glue chuck recently when I was watching a youtube channel clickspring a clot maker and he uses glue chucks all the time for doing mostly on brass and I and when I saw him using it in his videos I had remembered that little trick from the past and said you know what this would be a perfect opportunity to use a glue Chuck the super glue trick works great again just make sure that you take your time and don't get too carried away it is only so strong it is very strong it's a lot stronger than people probably think it is but it does have limitations and one of those limitations is when you get it when you use the heat to break it off and get it off you have a lot of glue residue on here and I basically was able to clean that up going over to the wire wheel just knocking most of it off and then using some acetone as a solvent to basically wipe off a little bit that was left it would took a little elbow grease quite honestly but but it does come off a pretty it comes off with the acetone so anyway there you go guys I hope you enjoyed that and we'll let you guys take a look at the dividing plate so when we get them back hopefully my buddy will be able to get that knocked out for me and will be able to be in business and I will have another episode of using the dividing head coming up in the near future once we get the right plate to get that job done so thanks for watching Oh

Channel: Keith Rucker - VintageMachinery.org

Views: 174,867

Rating: 4.8081784 out of 5

Keywords: machine shop, machinist, dividing head, Kearney & Trecker, Lathe, Glue Chuck, Shop, Vintage Machinery, milling machine, indexing head, vintage machinery keith rucker, vintage machinery videos, dividing head milling machine, dividing head repair

Id: 1Cf0idHq_uU

Length: 36min 43sec (2203 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 08 2016