Making involute gears on the vertical mill

cathead

CATWERKS LTD
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Today I was able to crank out a couple gears for my metric threading project. One is 63 teeth and the other
is 80 teeth. I found that running in back gear at about 75 rpm seemed to work out the best. The chips came
off shiny so not overworking the cutter too much I don't think. Also I had made several other gears on a
previous day so they are in the photo also. They seem to mesh nicely so for their intended purpose should be fine.
P1020201.JPG
These gears were carved out of a piece of half inch hot roll steel that I got at the scrappers.
First I cut some squares and then lopped off the corners and turned them to gear blanks
in the lathe. They need a clean and polish job at present. I think these two gears will be
pinned together and run as an idler with two small gears driving them. So far so good and
hopefully they will turn into something useful. A Machinery's Handbook comes in very handy
for the information on how to do gear cutting. I used the basic spur gear formulas in the process.
 
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A glass bead blast is a good way to remove the mill scale. Calculations for ordinary spur gears are quite simple and easy, and depth is stamped right on the cutter; the only hard part is not making indexing mistakes! I have made a lot less mistakes since I got a genuine Brown & Sharpe dividing head; in the indexing tables there is a column that reads "graduation" This sets the sector blades to a position that equals the number of holes in the dividing plate, instead of counting holes.
 
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