Indicating in an indexing head

darkzero said:
That's my kitchen. :D I don't know how you do it but I always clean my table off before bolting an accessory to the table. ;)

I don't normally have both my super spacer & vise on the table at the same time. My SS was already trammed in & I needed to use the vise for something quick but I still needed the SS afterwards. It ended up that what I needed to use the SS for just barely cleared the vise so I just left it on there.
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DUDE! it's a compliment...just take it! I do have slots for keys on my vice (Kurt dx6) to be honest, I haven't checked the indexing head... How accurate are they? I mean if I made a couple (I assume the chance of finding some that fit my *whatever* the opposite side won't be the same as my PM727?) Is it sort of close, very close or dead nuts? Please everyone understand, I do a lot of research outside of this site/reading etc, but books and blogs don't answer questions. I actually consciously limit my amount of questions, but this is a difficult field to just try to pick up on my own.
 
Just got back to this . The keys are simple to make even if they end up being step keys . Next step if you wanted would be to machine the outside casting parallel to that slot . This wouldn't be done on a Hartford head or anything that large , but for 5C indexers and spinners it works great . Just throw it in the vise and you're done . No indicating needed .

( and no , my shop doesn't resemble Darks ) :big grin:
 
GunsOfNavarone said:
DUDE! it's a compliment...just take it! I do have slots for keys on my vice (Kurt dx6) to be honest, I haven't checked the indexing head... How accurate are they? I mean if I made a couple (I assume the chance of finding some that fit my *whatever* the opposite side won't be the same as my PM727?) Is it sort of close, very close or dead nuts? Please everyone understand, I do a lot of research outside of this site/reading etc, but books and blogs don't answer questions. I actually consciously limit my amount of questions, but this is a difficult field to just try to pick up on my own.
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Haha, don't get me wrong, I didn't take your comment in any negative way. Just having fun as were you.

On your Kurt I'd expect it to be fairly accurate but how accurate depends on what is acceptable to you. Like how accurate the slot is milled, how accurate the keys are, how well they fit the slots.The slots on your mill table would need to be accurate too (position on table where your accessory would mount) then have to make sure there are no burs, chips, etc.

I'm just a hobby guy & I haven't used keys a lot. Again on things like my vise I don't use em, easy to tram in the vise & when mounting the vise I like to slide the vise back & forth to ensure there's nothing under it that I might have missed. With keys you can't really do that. And it's a pain if you have a big heavy vise having to plop it down directly onto the slot when using keys.

Now my super spacer is pretty heavy so I really didn't want to use the keys & I didn't for a long time. I started using them cause I would find myself in situations where I couldn't get my tailstock aligned afterwards (not thinking I would need it to begin with) because the SS wasn't centered well over a slot. I would then have to retram the SS. So I started using the keys to make sure the SS would alway be within range of using my tailstock. I made my keys undersize so I still tram the SS in. Kind of hard to explain without typing much more detail and may not make sense to others but saves me time now & it works for me.
 
darkzero said:
So I started using the keys to make sure the SS would alway be withing range of using my tailstock. I made my keys undersize so I still tram the SS in. Kind of hard to explain without typing much more detail and may not make sense to others but saves me time now & it works for me
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This makes perfectly good sense to anyone familiar with shop work . If you try to make something perfect with no adjustment , you'll fail every time . Make it very close and bring it in perfect with a minimal adjustment and you're golden . :)
 
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