Semi-universal dividing head

jcp

jcp

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There are several vendors on Ebay that sell semi-universal dividing head sets. They all appear to be from the same manufacture and around $320.00. Has anyone here purchased one of these? What is your appraisal of them? I would post a link but I'm not sure that's within the rules.

Jim
 
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It's okay to post items for sale as long as it does not promote yourself and if its in regard to your question in the post referring to. And those items that promote yourself must be posted in the "For Sale" section of this forum. And to do that, you must donate a small amount to become a premium member, and at that time, you can post in the for sale section. As always, go read site rules if in doubt or ask one of us staff members for clarification. Ken

AS for the Asian made dividing heads, they are accurate to what they say they are and most are of good decent quality. I have a older Asian made one, I suspect it's made in Japan or Taiwan, too old to be from China. There are members here that do have the newer Chinese ones, lets see what they say.

Ken
BTW: Welcome to H-M!
 
I can see a lot of potential for one of these, both on the lathe and on the mill. You've got me interested.
 
I was thinking that a "semi universal" dividing head should have a disengagable worm and provision for rapid indexing and does not have the input gearing to cut spirals and doing differential indexing; this one does not appear to have a disengageable worm and quick indexing feature, so. I'd think it is a "plain" dividing head by definition. My B&S 9" is full universal and does it all.
 
I hadn't really ever noticed it before, but what is a "semi-universal" or for that matter is there a "universal" dividing head?
By the reply above there seems to be a drive that can be engaged / dis-engaged?
 
The disengaging feature I believe is only found on the fully universal dividing heads and only on the BS-2 heads. It's not on my BS-0 dividing head either.
 
A true universal dividing head has a gear train that revolves the dividing plate and sector; change gear can be set up to the input of that gear train and connected to the table screw so that spirals can be cut, including spiral gears, cams, and tool flutes, etc., on parallel or tapered work pieces. Also the gear train can be connected by change gears to the back end of the spindle to divide many divisions that cannot be divided by plain indexing, such as prime numbers, 127 for metric transposing gears being a good example. Also as I said in the previous post, the worm is disengagable so that rapid indexing can be done when time is of the essence and extreme accuracy is not necessary; a pin slides out of the body of the dividing head, actuated by a lever and slides into holes of the rapid index plate that is located behind the chuck; the pin and holes are slightly tapered for tight fit. I think, 2,4,6, and 8 hole circles are provided (it's raining and cold, and I'm not going out to confirm).
A semi universal is mostly the same, but lacks to drive to the dividing plate/sector, so it cannot preform spiral milling or differential indexing.
 
Thanks for the link Ken. I'm concerned that anything over the 4" unit is going to be to big for my mill. I'm using a Clausing 8530 for the time being and the table is only 6 x 24.
 
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