Cut Multiple Gears on One Arbor?

[G-ManBart]

Hey all,

This is part two of the planning stages for a gear project I'm looking at in the next few months. I promise, I did some searches and didn't find anything exactly like what I'm considering...maybe I just used the wrong terms?

I'm looking to make a set of metric change gears for my Sheldon lathe and I know there are other people interested in a set as well so it got me thinking about making a batch of them.

Now that I've got my K&T horizontal mill up and running minus the flood coolant (should be working by the time I tackle this), it has changed what I was thinking about this project. Assuming a typical configuration with a dividing head and tailstock, could I get away with simply making an arbor that would let me cut maybe 6 identical gears at a time? The bed length and travel are more than enough to accommodate that, but I don't know if there are pitfalls in the longer arbor deflecting more, etc? What about simply stacking the blanks so they're compressed against one another (and kept in alignment via the key) so it's essentially one cut that's 3" long instead of six individual cuts .5" long?

My thinking is that the setup time is nearly the same for one as multiples so why not take advantage of that? Crazy idea? Advice, references, threads I should be looking at?

 

[682bear]

It shouldn't be a problem... it might help if you have a tailstock for your dividing head to reduce or eliminate deflecting. I've made two gears together before, but I machined a solid piece, then parted off the gears in the lathe.

-Bear

 

[Eddyde]

It should work fine as long as you can keep the blanks aligned. Another approach might be, Instead of stacking blanks, machine as one piece of bar then cut them to length.

 

[benmychree]

Make all the blanks and stack them on an arbor, this is standard practice. be careful to make the blanks so that they are all accurately parallel in thickness so that when the arbor nut is tightened, out of parallelism does not distort the arbor and cause the gear blanks to be non concentric.

 

[G-ManBart]

Thanks for the suggestions and advice everyone! I'm glad I didn't have a crazy idea