Horizontal Milling Attachment

[cfellows]

Here's the video. I'm using my newly finished, right angle milling attachment to cut a 10 degree, 12 tooth helical gear. The gear blank is mounted on the 4th axis which controls the indexing and also the rotational movement needed in concert with the X-axis movement to accomplish the cutting.

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L18a_wfaRBE[/ame]

The initial centering of the cutter on the gear blank, and the angle of the involute cutter are pretty critical. If you get them off even slightly, the valleys between the teeth will be too thick and the gear tooth too thin.

Here are some pictures of the gear I just cut (the small one) and an 80 degree, 6 tooth gear I had made earlier using my manual helical gear cutter attachment on my lathe. The large gear will be mounted on the crankshaft and the smaller gear on the side shaft for my conversion of the Bessemer to 4 stroke operation. I know it seems counter intuitive that the larger gear will spin twice as fast as the smaller gear, but that's how helical gears work.

I'm quite please with the right angle attachment. I think it will see a fair amount of use.

Chuck

 

[Brian Rupnow]

CHUCK---YOU ARE AWESOME!!!!---Brian

 

[Herbiev]

Simply brilliant Chuck.

 

[Swifty]

Now that's very clever Chuck. To convert your machine to CNC, build a 4th axis and machine work like that is amazing.

Paul.

 

[cfellows]

CHUCK---YOU ARE AWESOME!!!!---Brian

Thanks, Brian, always nice to know you're watching!

Simply brilliant Chuck.

Thanks Herbie

Now that's very clever Chuck. To convert your machine to CNC, build a 4th axis and machine work like that is amazing.

Paul.

Thanks, Paul, it's funny how these things come together sometimes.

Chuck

 

[DJP]

Congratulations. I watched this thread with interest because I have an old Burke #4 horizontal mill with vertical attachment. It's good to know that my equipment is still relevant, sort of.

I have cut a new replacement gear using the original gear as an indexing guide but everything that I do is totally manual so watching your video was magical.

I smiled when you said that this was the fourth gear being cut. I too cut a few extras once the jig was set. Having spare gears for the spare gears is not a bad thing. The 50 year old machine that the gear was for can now run for at least another 200 years.

Thanks for sharing.

 

[capin]

This is going to solve alot of my problems also Chuck. Thanks for taking us with you on this AWESOME project. Brian

 

[cfellows]

Thanks, guys. For anyone contemplating building a similar setup, here are a couple of concerns you should think about.

I had originally planned to make the body out of a single piece of 4" or 4.5" OD pipe with an ID that would fit my spindle housing. But I decided on the 3" square tubing because I wanted to make the horizontal shaft as short as possible. Two reasons for this. First, the longer the horizontal spindle, the more torsion force it exerts on your milling spindle housing when cutting. Second, I needed to make sure I had enough Y-Axis travel to let me position the cutter over the work when cutting in the X-Axis direction.

Also, I already had the 3" tubing on hand and laying out, holding and boring the flat faces was easier than if I had used a round tube. I don't much like the looks of (my) welding, but in this case it was a practical solution.

Chuck

 

[JAndrew]

Mr. Fellows,

Brilliant!

Thanks for posting this. I'm currently working the exact same problem but in reverse...putting a vertical milling head on my horizontal mill.

I was wondering what that bevel gear ratio does to your milling spindle speeds...? It looks like the gear set is 3.1:1 (if I counted right). Should be able to get some pretty low speeds on your horizontal spindle but can you get higher speeds? Or would you ever even need higher speeds?

Beautiful work either way. You've got me re-thinking the plan I had...:wall:

I have a good set of bevel gears from an old boat outdrive that I'm very glad now I kept! I'm going to have to count the gear teeth on it when I get home.

Thanks!
-J.Andrew

 

[cfellows]

Mr. Fellows,

Brilliant!

Thanks for posting this. I'm currently working the exact same problem but in reverse...putting a vertical milling head on my horizontal mill.

I was wondering what that bevel gear ratio does to your milling spindle speeds...? It looks like the gear set is 3.1:1 (if I counted right). Should be able to get some pretty low speeds on your horizontal spindle but can you get higher speeds? Or would you ever even need higher speeds?

Beautiful work either way. You've got me re-thinking the plan I had...:wall:

I have a good set of bevel gears from an old boat outdrive that I'm very glad now I kept! I'm going to have to count the gear teeth on it when I get home.

Thanks!
-J.Andrew

Thanks! The gear ratio is 3.1:1. I chose these gears based on their availability and the fact that the bevel gear had a large center opening. The lower speeds will be fine since I'll mostly be using larger diameter cutters.

Chuck