Buying involute gear cutters

[Swifty]

Have any of the Australian members purchased a set of involute cutters? I would like to know which company you purchased them from, there are a few on the Internet, just not sure who to use.
I am after a set of mod 1 cutters.

Paul.

 

[hi speed scrap]

Hi Swifty,
While I have not purchased full sets of gear cutters for a few
years, I have purchased individual cutters from 2 ebay suppliers
more recently. One in Wandong Nth of Melb, the other is a well
known S.A. supplier.
Reminder that H & F big 3 day sale coming up next weekend, you
may be able to do a deal there. Worth calling them.

I have found for myself, that it is cheaper and quicker to buy
finished gears off the shelf, some are just ridiculously cheap and
the quality is superb, and the range is huge. 9300 odd gears!
There is a 60mb PDF download catalog on the web at
http://www.khkgears.co.jp/en/catalogs/index.html

There is a dealer here in melbourne who generally carries good
stocks.

Dave.
Boronia.

 

[Swifty]

Thanks for the information Dave, I am aware of the H & F sale next week, although I haven't seen that they carry any gear cutters. Have cut my own spur gears with a home made hobbling cutter, they came out great. The trouble is that I want to cut some bevel gears which require a single point cutter. I realise that I can make my own, but thought a set of cutters might be handy.

Paul.

 

[aarggh]

I've bought quite a few sets off this seller on Ebay and I'm very happy with them, they seem as good quality as I've seen anywhere else, and I just wasn't prepared to spend 3-4 hundred per set:

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/FULL-SET...020?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item19d905330c

There is also an Aussie distributor (at nearly 3 x the cost!) but I don't know if these are worse or better than the ones I bought:

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/GEAR-CUT...15?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_15&hash=item19c93245eb

cheers, Ian

 

[Davo J]

CTC is good and you can see what the postage is strait away.
When you go to the link click on the blue drop down next to "All products" in the search bar and it will drop down a list of everything including the gears you after. I have not heard any complaints with them since he has been selling them and I am on most of the forums around.
http://www.ctctools.biz/servlet/StoreFront

Dave

 

[Mbusha]

Hi Swifty,
While I have not purchased full sets of gear cutters for a few
years, I have purchased individual cutters from 2 ebay suppliers
more recently. One in Wandong Nth of Melb, the other is a well
known S.A. supplier.
Reminder that H & F big 3 day sale coming up next weekend, you
may be able to do a deal there. Worth calling them.

I have found for myself, that it is cheaper and quicker to buy
finished gears off the shelf, some are just ridiculously cheap and
the quality is superb, and the range is huge. 9300 odd gears!
There is a 60mb PDF download catalog on the web at
http://www.khkgears.co.jp/en/catalogs/index.html

There is a dealer here in melbourne who generally carries good
stocks.

Dave.
Boronia.

Dave,

Followed the link above and there also is some nice reference material available as PDF as well.

http://www.khkgears.co.jp/en/gear_technology/guide_info.html

English translation, mostly not so bad, and I think well worth the read. I am a tech manual junkie.

Thanks for the post.

 

[Swifty]

Mark, a lot of technical advice on the site below, I have requested a metric catalogue, hoping they will post it to Australia, should do as it appears on their list when I entered details.

http://www.sdp-si.com/D805/D805cat.htm#MB1

Paul.

 

[Swifty]

Thanks Ian and Dave, I have ordered a set from CTC direct. It was $26 cheaper than buying through their eBay site. Beats paying close to $300 for a local supplier, most likely comes from the same factory.

Paul.

 

[ShedBoy]

I have bought plenty of gear from CTC. Always seem good quality and service is fast. Their diamond lapping paste is a mint buy too.
Brock

 

[rodw]

I have bought plenty of gear from CTC. Always seem good quality and service is fast. Their diamond lapping paste is a mint buy too.
Brock

I can also vouch for CTC. I have for a couple of orders from them and the service has been excellent and included some QC tool holders not on their web site and they just sent me a PayPal invoice for the balance required.

 

[ruzzie]

A couple more sellers in Aus
Mcjing - Sydney
http://www.mcjing.com.au/searchresult.aspx?keyword=gear cutter
Minitech - Brisbane
http://wic043u.server-secure.com/vs4487_secure/find.asp?q=gear+cutter

 

[ROBERTBRUCE]

In reply to the original question, why not make a hob . I have had very good results using a home made hob on steel and cast iron (part of a rayburn and as hard as XXXX). I needed the gears to make a rotary table and a dividing head
for a myford both of which work fine.
Robert

 

[Swifty]

Hi Robert, I already have a hob that I made to cut some spur gears, the problem is that I want to cut some mitre gears, and these need to be cut with a single tooth cutter, as the hob interferes with the previous cut. Found out the hard way!

For just over $100, I have ordered a set of 8 cutters in the module that I wanted. Just thought that by the time I mucked around and made a single point cutter, which only covered a small number of teeth, it was easier to buy a set in HSS.

Paul.

 

[Davo J]

If your cutting steel gears use plenty of coolant and the right speed and feeds and they will last you a long time, well worth the money in my eyes for the ease of cutting gears.

Before we had these Chinese sellers there is no way we could afford a gear never mind a gear set for hobby use. A lot of people go on about Chinese stuff, but for a lot of us hobby guys (especially in Australia) there is no way we could afford this as a hobby without them, they have made tooling obtainable at reasonable prices for a lot of us on small budgets.

Don't forget to post up your gears when your doing them, going on experience you should have them by the end of the week or earlier.

Dave

 

[ROBERTBRUCE]

Is it just me ? but i get a lot of pleasure in producing something from nothing. I would not spend money on somthing that i can produce (and learn ). There have been articles on how to produce
invalute cutters, can dig them out if you are interested.
Just before you all jump down my throught and say you have to buy somethings I will retreat to my shed to play with my portable forge, need to make pullys for a 7x12 moter went bang some time ago.

 

[Fluffy]

G'Day Paul,
I have bought a number of individual involute cutters from Tracy Tools in the UK. Their service is excellent & goods are delivered in 7 to 10 days. All of the cutters have been good quality & are massively, cheeper than any of the quotes that I obtained from local suppliers.
Regards,
Don.

 

[Davo J]

I can fully understand what you mean there, and I also get great enjoyment out of making something from nothing, but there is a cut off point for me.

It all depends on the member, his time, and how much of a project he wants to make it. On one end of the scale you could pour your own metal into sand castings to make the gear, then on the other end there is going and buying a gear, so it's up to the individual to work out how much work he wants to do for a set project.

If someone is looking for something he has already made up his mind he wants to buy them instead of making it another project to make the tooling, and this way he will have the full set for years to come for other projects where it will save time.

I bought a mill years ago with a NT30 spindle and after looking locally and seeing collet chucks for around $180 each I thought I would make my own, then I see Chinese sellers selling them with a nice hardened and ground finish for $17, I couldn't make them for that and don't have a way to heat treat or precision grind them anyway.

Dave

 

[radial1951]

Hi Robert, I already have a hob that I made to cut some spur gears, the problem is that I want to cut some mitre gears, and these need to be cut with a single tooth cutter, as the hob interferes with the previous cut. Found out the hard way!

For just over $100, I have ordered a set of 8 cutters in the module that I wanted. Just thought that by the time I mucked around and made a single point cutter, which only covered a small number of teeth, it was easier to buy a set in HSS.

Paul.

Hi Paul, If you are making bevel gears, there are a few methods. Many moons ago I milled the diff gears for a couple of large scale traction engines using the "correct" offset and roll method. The cutters are special for bevel gears, having the correct form on the sides, but are thinner to fit through the gap at the inner small end of the teeth. There was a total of 7 cuts per tooth space AND the tips of the teeth had to be filed towards the small end!! A real PITA.

After doing all that, I discovered the "parallel depth method", using standard involute milling cutters. Would have saved me literally weeks of work. Ah well, live and learn...

BTW, CTC prices and service are fine, but don't expect good quality. A mate and I have been testing some R8 collets and frankly most of them are ru**ish. The Bridgeport's taper indicated under 0.0002" TIR, but some of the collets have up to 0.003" or more runout, depending on how far from the collet. Not simple parallel runout, but wobble. Hmm.

The form on an involute cutter probably doesn't matter as much as collet accuracy, but it would be nice if the teeth are concentric to the bore...

Where did you end up buying the involute cutters?

Regards, RossG
radial1951
_____________

 

[aarggh]

Is it just me ? but i get a lot of pleasure in producing something from nothing. I would not spend money on somthing that i can produce (and learn ). There have been articles on how to produce
invalute cutters, can dig them out if you are interested.
Just before you all jump down my throught and say you have to buy somethings I will retreat to my shed to play with my portable forge, need to make pullys for a 7x12 moter went bang some time ago.

Hmm, I used to approach everything like that too, for no other reason that I could, but as I get older my time is becoming increasingly limited and valuable, so while I'm happy to waste time on projects simply because I really enjoy them, some things, like re-creating precision tooling that I can buy better than I could make, for a fraction of what it would cost me, I just buy now. That free's up more time to be spent on things I want to spend time on, and sometimes things I don't!

cheers, Ian

 

[Swifty]

Thanks everyone for your comments, I have ordered a set of cutters from CTC, cheaper buying direct from them at $100 a set of Mod 1. Works out at $12.50 per cutter, can't beat that. I have always been keen on making my own tools etc, but the time and effort put into making 1 cutter was not worth it, especially seeming that the cutter would only cover a small range of teeth. I will have to make an arbor to hold the cutters anyway. By the way, it took 3 attempts before getting the hob right, hob 1 did not heat treat well, hob 2 tooth form not quite deep enough, hob 3 perfect.

I have been taking pictures along the way, making the hobbing cutter and cutting some spur gears. When I have the mitre gears ready to cut I will take more pictures and post about it.

By the way, mitre gears work in sets of 1:1 ratio, bevel gears work in different ratios. The spur and bevel / mitre gears are for a couple of projects that I have in mind for the future, as I haven't done any gear cutting before, I thought that I would see how I go making them first.

Paul.