Homemade Rotary Table

Homemade Rotary Table
I needed a rotary table to machine circular sections of parts on my milling machine and to drill holes equispaced on a PCD. I had a right angle drive wormbox with an 80:1 reduction, so I figured if I could somehow fix a clamping table to the driven axis then I would achieve what I needed. During my search for suitable plate steel I came across a flywheel from a soil compactor with 80 teeth. This would at least enable me to use divisions of 80. (2,4,5,8,10,16,20) A little restrictive but better than what I had.
First job was to machine both sides of the wormbox, which I did by using and end mill and clamping the driven axis of the wormbox to my milling table and rotating the box by hand, (very carefully I might add).

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Next was to machine the top and bottom plates to be a precise fit onto the box and to integrate the flywheel under the top plate.
The 10” diameter plates were at the limit of my lathe’s capacity and some care was needed with toolpost placement at times. The pitched holes were all carefully manually marked and drilled as I didn’t have a better method at this stage.

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I made a sub-top plate and axle to attach the top plate to the driven gear, machined tee-slots into the top plate and made tee-nuts to suit. Unfortunately I don’t have any photo’s of these items.
I made an aluminium drive handle with speed holes manually pitched, and a 3 position division locking mechanism. 1stposition- engaging the root of the tooth, 2nd position- straddling the tip of the tooth, 3rd position- fully retracted.


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I enjoyed making this table and continue to enjoy using it, and just recently I have acquired another rotary table which has 360 degree divisions with accuracy in minutes and seconds, so this now allows me to cover all possible divisions.

Very nice!
Where did you get the right angle worm box?

Nicely done Astro. Thanks for showing us how to build one with little machining required.

Al

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Originally Posted by baskarz

Very nice!
Where did you get the right angle worm box?

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I picked up the wormbox from a garage sale in my neighbourhood. An ex-engineer was selling up his life's collection. Hunt around, I'm sure you'll be able to find one:)

Thanks Astro! I've added your Rotary Table to our Machining category, as well as to your builder page: Astro's Homemade Tools. Your receipt:

<div id="blocks"> <div class="block b1 pngfix"> <div class="bimg"> <div> <a href="http://www.homemadetools.net/rotary-table-6"><img src="http://www.homemadetools.net/uploads/118264/rotary-table-6.jpeg" /></a></div> </div> <div class="head pngfix"></div> <div class="left pngfix"></div> <div class="right pngfix"></div> <div class="blockover b1 pngfix"> <div class="title"> <a href="http://www.homemadetools.net/rotary-table-6">Rotary Table</a> <span> by <a href="/builder/Astro">Astro</a></span> </div> <div class="tags">tags: <a href="http://www.homemadetools.net/tag/machining">machining</a>, <a href="http://www.homemadetools.net/tag/mill">mill</a>, <a href="http://www.homemadetools.net/tag/rotary-table">rotary table</a></div> </div> </div> </div>

Great work, and post detail, on that rotary table, Astro. Thanks!

Nicely done! I have a couple of self propelled lawn mower gear boxes that I have been hunting for something good to use them for

Hi Astro,

Very nice work! Your Rotary Table is the 'Tool of the Week'!

You'll be receiving one of our official HomemadeTools.net T-shirts:

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Just let me have (via PM) your details (size, color choice, and mailing address) and we'll get things processed directly.

Congrats!

Ken

This thread has been moved to the Must Read subforum. Congrats (and thanks) to Astro for making such a valuable contribution!

Thanks for showing the way you made yours, I've been going to make one now I know I will . Mainly because I can't afford the ones they sell, I can get a 60-1 reducer for thirty bucks, have a nice 8" faceplate, can get starter ring gear from an old mower engine. Even have a nice piece of 1/2" plate to make the bottom. Yupp ya helped me past my whys and should I . Thanks

Hi Ken, received my T-shirt, great quality, thanks so much.:cool:

Hi Astro great Job .. congratulation ..

:hattip::hattip:

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Originally Posted by Astro

Hi Ken, received my T-shirt, great quality, thanks so much.:cool:

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Excellent - glad to hear it!

How about a photo of the shirt "in the wild"? :D

Ken

Well it's been a while since I last posted, but here is a couple of photos of the Homemade Tools T-shirt "in the wild" in rural Australia. Sorry about the quality of the model but, you have to work with what you have. This bike was displayed at a local RV & camping show. It is fully functional with a four cylinder car engine for power.

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Fantastic!! Love the bike, but I couldn't squeeze it into the garage! :cool:

Also great to see our shirt out and about.

Ken

Great work Astro. I picked up a couple of reduction drives (40:1) recently at the scrap yard, with the same thing in mind... :D

-EN

Astro,

This is a great project and can be scaled to almost any size depending on the right angle drive wormbox with reduction gears. I am currently looking for something really small for micro-machining to fit a 2" to 3" diameter faceplate. You have lots of great ideas I want to incorporate into the smaller version.

Thank you for all the photos and steps of construction,

Paul

Thanks Paul for you kind words. I didn't think that this build would be that popular. It seems that it was of interest to quite a few people. I have a new cad program I am trialling so I will try to describe the locking mechanism I made as I don't think the pictures showed it well. Do you have a cad program on which you could view a 3d model? If not I'll see if I can sort out some other way of showing you the detail.
Pete.

Pete,
Yes, I use TurboCAD and it can view just about any of the typical CAD formats. One of the machining operations I want to try on the rotary table is milling rounded ends on stationary steam engine linkage parts. There is a clever way to do this safely without a rotary table (and I think it was Randy Richard on YouTube who demonstrated the technique on his Bridgeport) but the rotary table would be universal for different sized radii rather than using a jig.
Tanks Paul

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Originally Posted by Paul Jones

Pete,
Yes, I use TurboCAD and it can view just about any of the typical CAD formats. One of the machining operations I want to try on the rotary table is milling rounded ends on stationary steam engine linkage parts. There is a clever way to do this safely without a rotary table (and I think it was Randy Richard on YouTube who demonstrated the technique on his Bridgeport) but the rotary table would be universal for different sized radii rather than using a jig.
Tanks Paul

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Sometimes you can't escape the rotary table for rounding over jobs but, in many cases, a somewhat simpler arrangement for linkage rounding will do the job very easily. Here's my take on such a device...

http://www.homemadetools.net/forum/r...ll-parts-27242

Classic DIY, dividing is of one of the most important shop functions. Your self created ro-tab is a great example; just of how much dividing goes on building certain types of work.
Don42's http://www.homemadetools.net/forum/k...zzle-nut-42767 is another example.

I'd think a safe bet is rotary tables world-wide do more dividing than circular milling.