R-8 Modular Gear Cutter Arbor

[rossbotics]

In my last post I had built a dividing fixture for cutting some 3 Modular gears, I mentioned that I would post the arbor for holding the cutter when it was done.

There was a lot of work making the indexing fixture and arbor but they came out very nice, Would had been a lot easier to buy a dividing head and be done with it, But that takes all the fun out of it, Besides isn't that what this site is all about ? Making tools and sharing ideas?

The gears I'm making are a 3 Mod with 30 teeth which takes a number 5 cutter, Got 2 of those off E-Bay pretty reasonably priced.

I'm making a total of 9 gears of all the same dimensions, I ganged up 3 at a time on the indexers mandrel and started making chips.

Below are some photos of the arbor, indexer , and the gear teeth being cut on the mill.

As always, thanks for looking and happy Machining

Doug




Above shows the arbor and it's components



Above shows another view of the arbor , Note the spring loaded dowel pin which serves as keyway, being spring loaded allows me to mount any thickness cutter and have a full length for key driving the cutter, the arbor washer will push the pin into the reamed hole to what ever depth it needs to be.



Another view



Assembled



Above shows all the tooling and 3 gear blanks



Above shows the gear teeth being cut, The gears are made from 4140 annealed steel, After the machining is done the teeth will be heat treated



Another view of the teeth being cut



A view of the indexing arrangement on the indexer

[DIYer]

Thanks rossbotics! We've added your Gear Cutter Arbor to our Machining category, as well as to your builder page: rossbotics' Homemade Tools. Your receipt:

Gear Cutter Arbor by rossbotics

tags: arbor, gears, cutting tool

[Ed ke6bnl]

Nice work, well done

[PJs]

Beautiful work on the Arbor, Doug! Thanks for sharing this and your gear cut with us also. Your projects are always a real inspiration!! Interesting that you gang cut the 3 gears, definitely would save time. They look to be about .75 thick each and the shaft on the indexer is 1"...any deflection or did you take multiple passes per tooth? Just a novice and was thinking about the 1.5D rule of thumb. Have an idea for something that uses a small rack and pinion and some concerns about holding the small rack vertically during cutting. Thanks again. ~PJ

[rossbotics]

Thanks PJs
There were no deflection in the mandrel at all. The gears were .787" thick. The outer diameter is 3.776". I took the whole depth of the tooth in one pass. The whole depth of the tooth is .266". I didn't have a problem at all.

Thank you very much for your compliment.
Happy Machining
Doug

[kbalch]

Hi Doug,

More great work and photography! Your Gear Cutter Arbor is the 'Tool of the Week'!

Since you've already received one of our official HomemadeTools.net T-shirts, we'd be glad to award you a $25 online gift card!

Just let me have (via PM) your email address and we'll get things processed directly.

Congrats!

Ken

[backyard_cnc]

Great job, the need to index accurately just seems to come up so often in the shop that having multiple ways to achieve it is most useful.

Gerald

[Captainleeward]

Doug, WOW that is some classy metal work there, I was thinking of buying the dividing plates for my rotary table now I am rethinking that idea .. :O)

[Ralphxyz]

Doug, is that a cold air gun you were using to cut the gears? If so what do you think of the cold gun? Where else do you use it?

Thanks for posting.

Ralph

[rossbotics]

No Ralph
That's just a air coolant nozzle with soluble oil diluted, I just cleaned up everything before I took the pictures

Thanks for asking
Doug