Reconditioning A 8" Palmgren Rotary Table

4

4GSR

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I bought this 8" Palmgren rotary table at an estate sale a while back. It was very cruded up from many years of neglect and Mother Nature, the elements attacking it.
The rotary table was completely disassembled, cleaned, and painted before re-assembling. I had to rework all of the dovetail slides to get them running reasonable straight again. I also re-ground the top and the bottom to make it look nice.
Pictures attached are showing the "before, work done, and the finished RT".
Enjoy!

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I love it when someone takes an old rusty tool and gives it a new life like this.

Me too!


I have not seen one like that it appears to be a rotary table on top of an X-Y table.
I could see that being useful.

Thanks for sharing the rebuild Ken.
-brino
 
4gsr:

Very nice work!
I bought a Kamakura last summer. I had no intention of restoring it. Now, you gave me inspiration.
 
4gsr:

Very nice work!
I bought a Kamakura last summer. I had no intention of restoring it. Now, you gave me inspiration.

Thanks Guys!!!

I almost threw this into the corner and said the heck with it!!! It was in much worst shape than I first thought it was in when I bought it. But I've hardly ever turned down an challenge in repairing things. But once it was cleaned up and painted, I couldn't stop! And I like to butcher up things on the surface grinder, and yes, made a mess. Had to set up on the mill and recut parts of the slides. And it never fails, I don't have a dovetail cutter for the funky angle Palmgren uses on their slides. So I kissed all the surfaces but the angel on the dovetail. Put it together for a "quick" fit and not too bad!.

The main reason for buying this rotary table, was to complement my 10" Imperial compound tilt rotary table. It weighs over 200 lbs!!! And it's a bear to set up on my mill when I need to use it. This will make it much easier when I need a RT. And no, my 10" RT is not going anywhere! I need it when I have a need for for indexing down to 1 second of a degree!
 
Why didn't you just scrape in the dovetails? Just curious. Tim
 
Why didn't you just scrape in the dovetails? Just curious. Tim

Palmgren does not scrape and fit the dovetails on any of the slides I've ever encountered on any of their products and I'm not going to either.

For what I want the RT for, the x-y slide will never get used. I'll use the table movements on the mill.

Maybe after retirement, yea, right, I'll sit down and scrape and fit the slides. Right now, I have more than I want to do in scraping and fitting on two lathes I'm working on.
 
Nice job. I have a question, how did you get it apart?
I have the same unit and it has a tight area when cranking the rotary table. I would like to take it apart but don't want to screw anything up either.
thanks
Jim
 
Yeah, the tight area is probably harden grease.
To get the table off, you must remove the two 1/4" socket head cap screws located down in the tee slots of the table top. Once removed, gently pry the table off. Palmgren did not press fit anything, so it shouldn't take much to get it removed. Oh, I forgot, remove the two knurled screws and the clamp shoes that locks the table down before removing the table. Once that is done, everything else comes apart easily. All of the pins that hole the handwheels onto the shafts are straight drive pins, not tapered.

When you go back together, use a waylube on the worm gear where it rides on the internal stud. On the worm and worn gear, use a grease with moly-disulfate in it. Before putting it back together, check the assembled height for correct clearance of the table to the housing. It should have only about .002-.005" clearance. If more than that, face off a little on the worm gear and try again. I used my surface grinder to do this as well as on the table top, too.
 
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