New Mill - Starter Tooling

I,ve mounted the plate to the rotary table and although I had flycut both faces of the plate on the mill table I decided to cut it again once I had it mounted to the rotary. I used the boring head with the carbide tipped lathe tool I had modified, it really does cut nicely. I can just about feel the join between the two sides of cutting but checking it with a good straight edge there is no evidence of a step and I doubt I would get it any better.

So I have the four T slots to cut and radius the corners, had I been able to fit the plate to the lathe (too big) I would probably have turned it to 6 inch diameter. Apart from the look of the plate I cant see the need for it to be circular so I will machine a good radius on the corners and leave the sides in between square.

Edited By Ron Laden on 04/12/2018 17:26:40

Sorry Paul, I am a bit late in thanking you for the above advice.

Nice job Ron. I’ve seen pictures of a number of fixture plates for Rotary tables and they all just had tapped holes, no tee slots.

Hi Vic,

I did consider that but the main reason for the plate is to increase size from 4 inch to 6 inch diameter I will probably add holes as jobs require but starting off with Tee slots I thought a good idea.

Ron

I also got some time today on the flycutter I am making, despite having a sick lathe at the moment I did manage to turn the body. I then gave a bit of thought to the best way to produce the 20 degree angle for the tool mount. I was going to go with a 10mm end mill (the largest I have) but thought that across 40mm diameter that would be a lot of back and forth with each cut.

So I decided to flycut it using the boring head, I set it up at 20 degrees in the vice and took 0.5mm cuts. It worked a treat and the bonus was that each pass of the cutter covered the full diameter. I dont know how they are normally set up and cut but that was my take on it.

A new weapon for the armoury, finished the flycutter, well apart from blacking it. Something very satisfying about making tooling.

Looks Good Ron,

Thanks for the plug with the tool bit logo. Just make sure to turn the logo bit side around so that it is inside... in contact with the grub screws in this particular case.... so that the correct side is facing out for the purpose of fly cutting.

Ketan at ARC

Well spotted Ketan, picture below with tool in correct orientation, well it is Sunday morning..

Ron,

Nice job.

Incidentally I noticed the diamond wheel dresser can be got from Chronos for about £8.

Paul.

First job of 2019, managed to get the T slots cut in the rotary table plate. It started out well enough but at the end of the 2nd - start of the 3rd slot the tool started to lose its edge. I have not used a T slot cutter before and it was a new HSS one but I could feel it just wasnt cutting as well. The 4th slot was quite hard work and I almost stalled the mill but just managed to avoid it. Anyway they are now cut and time to move on to making some fittings for the plate centre.

Hi Ron,

Your plate looks great. Keep posting the updates, I’m interested to see how you get on with it.

Happy New Year

Cheers

Mark

Nice looking sub-table, but there's summat wrong with a new tool that struggles after 4 short T-slots. Are you sure it was HSS and not cheesium?

Andrew

I thought that too and it isnt an Ebay cheapie, bought it from where I buy all of my mill tools so a bit disappointed really.

Ron

But don't you usually buy the "premium" range?

Edited By JasonB on 01/01/2019 16:53:22

I do, but I dont think they do T slot cutters in Premium or do they, cant see them in the catalogue or on the website.

Is the sub-table steel or aluminium?

Andrew

No they only do the ones you have.

6082 Andrew

Since you have left it square, a good decision, you could put some tapped holes in the corners for clamping big bits. They do say one of the biggest problems with rotary tables is that they are never big enough for the clamps.

Thanks Bazyle, I was going to make it circular but then thought of just putting a radius on the corners, then that seemed a waste of usable space, in the end I just knocked the corners off. It does of course reduce the rearward travel towards the column but it is not that much.

Ron