3-3/4"
ROTARY TABLE
Even if you own a larger, geared rotary table, you will find this
little
ungeared Rotary Table useful for small jobs in
your
vertical milling machine when you want to:
-
mill a radiused end on a part, or do part
circle
machining jobs such as rounding the ends of a set of loco con rods
-
space a row of drilled holes around a pitch
circle
-
Mill a circular slot
-
Mill two slots at an angle to each other... and so on.
The base of this little Rotary Table is 4" square, and the table is
3.75"ø.
Or you can scale it up, (or down, for the ultimate paperweight!*).
Whatever
size you make it, it’s an interesting and instructive
exercise in
machining.
Two stops run in a dovetail slot in the lower part of the table.
These can be set to control how much the table rotates, to suit a given
job.
The table is rotated by means of the little knurled lever,
or handle, which you can see on the far right side of the above
photo - you just poke it into one of the 4 holes in the Table's skirt,
and give it 3 or 4 turns to screw
it into the thread at the bottom of the hole, so the lever doesn't
suddenly fall out in the middle of whatever you are doing with it. Then
you pull the table through
whatever arc you need on the job you are doing.
Rotating the table by
hand like that might sound a little "home-made", at first look,
but it works very well in practice:
the weight of your arm (10 or 12 pound of soggy flesh!) on the
lever seems to soak up a lot of vibration that might otherwise
show up on the job as an uneven finish
from the cutter. In my experience using the little Rotary Table you see
above, the end result is a beautiful finish on whatever you are making
with it.
The
table skirt can be graduated 0-360º, for extra precision - exactly
how to do this to a very professional standard is explained in the
plans. If you choose to engrave yours
as you see I did on mine, it'll look like it came out of the Starrett
factory, and you'll be so pleased with yourself you won't be able to
see straight!
The plans consist of four 8-1/2 x 11 pages of
fully dimensioned drawings, and are accompanied by a 29-page 8-1/2 x
5-1/2" booklet of detailed and carefully written
instructions. I prepared the drawings and instructions
for this project almost 30 years ago, and have since sold close
to a thousand copies.
* Imagine one of these little guys at
about 2-1/2" in diameter, sittin' on your desk as a paper weight! You
can't buy "cool" like that --- but you can make it.
US Customers: US$10 ppd
Canadian Customers: (includes postage and applicable
taxes)
$10.00 AB, SK, MB, QC, YT, NT, NU
$10.66 BC
$10.76 NB, NL, ON
$10.95 NS, PE
Customers outside US or Canada:
C$12.00 airmail ppd