Motorized Rotary Table

[Cholmes]

It probably has been asked and done, but I want to put a variable speed motor on my rotary table. Has anyone here done it and if so how did you do it? I don't need an encoder or counting system on it, just a way to spin it at different speeds. It's an 8" table from Phase II.

 

[dracozny]

as far as just being motorized, that is purely dependent on the control you make for your driver. an analog control is probably easiest to control as far as variable speed using a rheostat but not always for stopping on a dime.

 

[Billh50]

Get a socket for your cordless makita drill that fits the nut on the handle. I've done that before.

 

[dracozny]

Get a socket for your cordless makita drill that fits the nut on the handle. I've done that before.

I had a smaller table, I used a drill right on the shank to do the same thing. It just depends on what kind of controllability is needed.

 

[Cholmes]

I hadn't thought of a drill, I'm just looking for a way to not have to crank the handle while I am milling round grooves into the face of some round parts. I have 500 discs 6" in diameter X 1/4" thick finished, that have 2 grooves on one face. I saw cut the blanks from 6" round then face one side, flip, cut grooves and then face to finished thickness. All manual machines, wish I had a CNC for stuff like this.

 

[dickr]

Are the grooves total circles on the one side and concentric ? Could you do them in the lathe by plunging ? If not remember --- Jobs like that will get you a CNC if you keep cranking. Good luck.
dickr

 

[extropic]

Circular, concentric grooves?? You don't have a lathe to do this work in?? 500 disks, 1000 grooves. Yikes!! You must be young. Work like that will make you old before your time. Beg/borrow/buy a lathe.

 

[Cholmes]

I do have a lathe, but a little afraid holding aluminum discs that are that thin. The grooves are circular and concentric, 3/16" wide X 3/32" deep with a radius bottom. They are some type of test plates for our School of Science. They are laying o-rings in the grooves and placing some type of apparatus on them to isolate vibration. We are gluing a rubber pad on the flat side as well. I am allowed to have a .250" hole in the center of the plate to locate and fasten them to a fixture plate on my table, these I drilled on the lathe. Sadly I do not make any money per say making these since I work for the university and only do work for them. But I will use this as justification for a CNC mill and CNC lathe in my annual budget request. I'm keeping a very tight log on time spent as well as material loss due to screw ups, plus I use students from the engineering school to do the work. They are young and have plenty of energy.

 

[f350ca]

Used this DC gear head motor to drive the rotary table with a flat belt. Needed to turn the od of this shive down and didn't want to remove the gap from the lathe.

 

[extropic]

6" dia. x 1/4" thick disks will be no sweat to hold in an appropriate size lathe chuck. Install your OD jaws (or flip jaws, if two piece) as shown in the image "OD Hard Solid Jaws".