Home Build Dividing Head

Here is Some Pick of one of my first " Big Projets" is was fun to build and quite use full in my small shop.


Yes it is a import tool post and yes it is still on that lathe





Facing and Tapping the Base plate. I eventually had to go to a friend of mine with a much bigger lathe to cut the face plate to size as mine were just too small to handle that size.


The face plate after it was cut on a bigger lathe


All the pieces mounted together.

Sadly I got sou caught up on the project that I completely forgot to take pictures of the face plate mount but here is the the done project before I cleaned the dividing plate ( Bought the plate at a junk shop for about 3$ or so) and before I painted every thing.


Since then I made some minor changes to the Dividing head and here is my very first gear that I made for my drill.



Second gear was for my myford copy lathe that I since sold...


Image of the full setup



and the last shot is of steel that I milled it worked ok.


Hope you all enjoyed the journey

Best Regards

Paul

Nice work Paul!

What sort of gearbox is that? Looks like a rather stout industrial part, given the ample surface area for helping to dissipate heat.

It is a 1 to 80 reduction gearbox made by Varvel. it was quite cheap at the time I bought it , about 80$ new then.
I checked their website but I would assume that it was one of the lighter industrial ones there because of the price
http://www.varvel.com/en/p/worm-gearboxes

FYI thus came through on home made tools
http://www.homemadetools.net/forum/homemade-rotary-table-18231#post25333

Same method. I can feel a new project coming on grrrr.

Isn't 80:1 unusual for a rotary table?
Was that dividing plate from one with a similar ratio?
What dividing ratios do you end up with in your combination?
-brino

brino said:

Isn't 80:1 unusual for a rotary table?
Was that dividing plate from one with a similar ratio?
What dividing ratios do you end up with in your combination?
-brino

Click to expand...

Yes it is and it is one of the things that I would have done differently a one to forty would have been much more versatile.
The plate that I have was literally one that I picked up at a junk shop and I have no idea where it worked before. On the one gear that I made I could not get the correct ratio and had to use a bolt calculator to drill a 7 whole ratio on the plate ( I did have some space for new holes) and If I do run into some trouble later I will make a new plate with some extra ratios.