How Would You Make This Part.

jbolt

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I have a part I need to make and I have some ideas on how to approach it but I am interested in what the brain trust comes up with.

The part is an aluminum hand-wheel. It is 8" in dia. x 1-1/2" thick. The center web is 1/2" thick.

The plan is to turn the web area, bore and drill the three mounting holes and then make a hub/fixture to hold the part to do the radius work. That's the easy part.

I'm curious how others would approach the inner and outer radius areas. The large radius is 3/4" and the inner fillet is 1/4".

Handwheel.png
 
The outer radius is easy, pivot the compound. Well, that's the basics, use your imagination. The inner radius, use a 1/2" ball mill as a cutter, held stationary in the tool post.
 
Collet closer hand wheel? I have thought about that same design, and decided that it would be better built in multiple pieces, a flat all the same thickness from the I. D. to the O.D. and then material added on both sides to make the grips. I have most of the pieces made, but the hand wheel is still not finished, but I think it should be softer grippy stuff, at least for a hand wheel. But not too soft so it could be grabby to clothing...
 
It almost looks like a ball turner job, since it looks like you have the 3-through hole pattern & could flip side A & B. However, the circular shapes are positioned more fore & aft across the lathe bed as opposed to more typical ball being machined concentric with the spindle axis, so your ball attachment mounted to carriage/compound would have to be able to retract enough to reach this position.

If its a 1-off & you have all that center hogging to do anyway, maybe make yourself a little X-Y program with some step-over amount like X=0.010" Y=whatever corresponds to the circular shape tangent. Looks like you have CAD so you could figure out intercepts from section drawing pretty quick = a cheap mans manual CNC. It will look like etcha-sketch initially. But then blue it & use a file to conform to shape until blue dissapears. I'm assuming this is a handle (not precise) but if all bets off if tight tolerance required. Here's how a model engineer shaped an irregular crankcase shape from solid.

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Well for starters I would do it as a casting.......And then just clean it up on the lathe

Cheers Phil
 
Mount on a fixture so that it can be turned around. Use a ball turner with a 1/4 radius tool and turn first side of grip area. Turn around on fixture and turn second side to blend in with first.
 
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What's the wheel OD and large radius size? As Bob suggested I'm thinking that using your your CNC mill is the way to go. Do the first side then flip it and locating off the center hole do the second side. You may have to do some lathe blending and polishing to make it pretty.

Tom S.
 
I would go for a form tool and build it for the radius and about 60 degrees of the arc.
Then start forming. you could take some step cuts to remove massive amounts of waste, then use the forming tool to get the final form.
just rotate your tool post to the arc you are working on.

You could mount the tool upside down for the other side and run in reverse.
 
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