For the past eight months or so I have been fooling around, trying to make an attachment for a milling machine that would cut gears. Because I'm lazy, I wanted the machine to do all the work. I don't think this is unreasonable as winding a table back and forth, turning the dividing head etc. etc is boring to say the least as well as easy to make a mistake.
I was lucky enough to be given half a milling machine that didn't work electrically and I married that to a cheap Chinese compound table which I motorised with a small 12v motor. This solved the back and forth bit. I made the rotary head and fitted a three jaw chuck, this was then driven through a gearbox with a stepper motor. The head was indexed using the advice given in Arduino Rotary Table for Dummies by both bmac2 and tjwal. I owe both you fellas a big thank you!
Today, the machine cut its first unsupervised gear that I thought was passable, needless to say that I hovered nervously in the background. The spur gear is a 64 tooth Mod 1 using a No 7 Chinese gear cutter, I brought the set of eight off Aliexpress.
Lots of problems, but that's the fun of it I suppose. Gear backlash in the rotary head was solved using a bicycle disc brake set up and a 12v solenoid and the electrical circuit nearly drove me mad before I arrived at a solution. I have posted a few pics, plus a link to a short Youtube video. If anyone wants to know any of the build details, please ask. I hope there are few out there that might enjoy this. Cheers, Peter
Here is the YouTube link:
I was lucky enough to be given half a milling machine that didn't work electrically and I married that to a cheap Chinese compound table which I motorised with a small 12v motor. This solved the back and forth bit. I made the rotary head and fitted a three jaw chuck, this was then driven through a gearbox with a stepper motor. The head was indexed using the advice given in Arduino Rotary Table for Dummies by both bmac2 and tjwal. I owe both you fellas a big thank you!
Today, the machine cut its first unsupervised gear that I thought was passable, needless to say that I hovered nervously in the background. The spur gear is a 64 tooth Mod 1 using a No 7 Chinese gear cutter, I brought the set of eight off Aliexpress.
Lots of problems, but that's the fun of it I suppose. Gear backlash in the rotary head was solved using a bicycle disc brake set up and a 12v solenoid and the electrical circuit nearly drove me mad before I arrived at a solution. I have posted a few pics, plus a link to a short Youtube video. If anyone wants to know any of the build details, please ask. I hope there are few out there that might enjoy this. Cheers, Peter
Here is the YouTube link:
