Gear cutting arbor

[Larry$]

Just learning to cut gears. Had to make this arbor for the 22mm cutter bores & keyways. Got very good fits. 12L14 steel.

 

[Aukai]

Something I'd like to learn too, gears, and splines, but the assortment of different types of cutters needed makes me. Even splines have pressure angles, and things

 

[Lo-Fi]

Nice one, it's a very satisfying machining topic to get into. I'm graduating to helicals shortly

 

[devils4ever]

Nice work. I bought a R8 version of this to cut some M1.25 gears. Now, I need to cut LOTS of M1 gears for my clock project.

 

[ErichKeane]

Nice, good job! The imported versions of these seem to rarely be concentric, so I made one a while back with a handful of diameters so that I could use slitting saws as well

I also skipped the keyway, though shockingly have never had a problem with it slipping.

 

[TorontoBuilder]

Just learning to cut gears. Had to make this arbor for the 22mm cutter bores & keyways. Got very good fits. 12L14 steel.

stupid me bought an arbor... Good job Larry

 

[Larry$]

Something I'd like to learn too, gears, and splines, but the assortment of different types of cutters needed makes me.

Do you need to be able to make all the different gear designs? I bought the small book from the home workshop series on making gears. Very good, learned a lot. Well maybe not a lot, it's a big subject. But enough to understand enough to actually make spur gears. I made my first gear by eyeball grinding a piece of 5/16" tool steel, mounted in a fly cutter. I indexed with a spin indexer. Yes many limitations BUT it worked. I copied a change gear from my lathe. Next made an arbor with a tool mounted straight across. Easier to grind an accurate tool. The spin indexer limits you to gears that can have teeth divisible by single degrees.

After reading the gear making book I now can calculate the required dimensions. There are multiple ways of indexing. Cheapest is printing a paper template. . The book shows how to make your own tooling. A rotary table on edge is accurate enough just by using the Vernier scales. Great care is needed to keep from indexing wrong though. Adding indexing plates to the RT makes it a lot easier to use.

And then we come to the best (?) most accurate method and expensive method, the semi-universal indexing head and commercially made gear cutters. It has lots of limitations but allows you to make most spur gears. I went down that rabbit hole. I couldn't come to grips with buying a full universal dividing head. Neither is a requirement for making gears, but make it much easier. Get the book first.