Dividing head advice

Oops! Back on topic... The Vevor BS-0 spindle is bored through at 0.735" which is 12 bore but they haven't cut the chamber

Just for the interest, there's a D/H on Ebay at the moment that is the right kind of thing - it's currently bolted to a sub-plate, but was originally supplied for a centre-slot machine...

Ebay - Indexing head...

Good evening,

For work on longcase clock parts I took the very easy way out of buying a 3 inch diameter tilting rotary table and chuck backplate from WARCO. The backplate has an M14x1 stub thread. £80 or thereabouts brand new.

I tried to get a new 3 jaw chuck but failed miserably, imports just aren't accurate enough. Ended up with a three jaw from a Unimat 3 which screws straight onto the plate. £60 second hand from EBAY.

I can set any whole number angles using the scale on the table, for any uneven angle I go back to geometry and mark the required intervals out on a piece of paper which I then fit behind the chuck mounting plate. Using an external datum point I wind the table round to that point and Bob's a relative.

regards,

David

I think the seller is dreaming at £275 but we will see.

Tony

If the steps on the hop up it is stood on are anything to go by then it's a 6" maybe even 8" chuck so no way it will fit on the small mill and no tilt for the bevel gears either.

Yes, I had the same thought about that one.

Most vintage DHs on eBay seem to be professional tools for large mills, with a minimum centre height of 5.5”.

I keep coming back to the same choices… the Hemingway ones, which don’t tilt, may not be rigid enough and tend not to come with chucks. Or the Vevor 4”, which on paper is too big to use with the supplied tailstock on the Burke #4 …. But presuming the centre hole is MT2, a suitable arbor could be made.

looking at the rotary table, it seems the tilting ones don’t divide, and the dividing ones don’t tilt. So that’s out i think.

And watching Keith Rucker cut bevel gears, he didn’t use a tailstock (how would you) but I’m not sure if my bevel gear would work or not, it would be close. But if it failed I could fall back on the Dore Westbury, which has acres of headroom.

It's not impossible to mount Hor/vert rotary tables at an angle, I've certainly done it a few times and also have a small indexer that I can put in my mill vice at any angle.

tailstock is generally not used for bevels but most do have some height/angle adjustment which is useful when working with long tapered parts like fluted columns

Edited By JasonB on 30/12/2021 20:30:47

Pretty sure this is a Timmins Dividing Head David - nice size for a Myford type machine, comes with a Myford chuck 'nose' and MT2 taper.

As David notes, it can be used on it's side (on a Myford or similar) or upright (on a Mill table). There's a matching tailstock casting too should you need one. Still available from Blackgates I believe (with the MT2 taper already machined). Doesn't "tilt" as such but you could probably work out a way to 'angle' it if required.

Big advantage is that they don't seem to go for the same kind of price as the other popular D/H alternatives but can still do just about everything the others can do too.

Regards,

IanT

I recently purchased a 6in dividing head and and have stripped and rebuilt it - However the original manufacturers nameplate had the name rubbed off - please can anyone identify for me the original manufactrurers name as the name plate says Made in Spain the part number is D1494A and it appears to be a Hoffmann type unit it weighs 50Kg it has a double sided plate with hole circles ranging from 49 down to 15 holes per circle it has a DIN 55022 or DIN 55027 faceplate see attached images 24 stop positions and power feed via 25mm shaft 6mm key

My album Robert Trethewey (6in Dividing Head Rebuild)

If you are still looking for a Rotary Table, the vertex HV6 can, as the name says, be used in Vertical or Horizontal mode. With the face of the table vertical, the centre height is 4 inches.

The mounting slots may need to be extended to take Tee bolts / studs to enable it to be fitted some milling machine tables.

The Myford R T that i saw, bore an uncanny resemblance to my Vertex. There used to be a another lookalike made by Soba.

I use a Tailstock and the Division Plates for gear cutting, rather than the vernier scale. Although for some tooth counts, not obtainable with the three Division Plates, this may be needed..

Having made stepped dowels to align the Tailstock along the Mill table, I devised a means of aligning the Tailstock vertically, whilst simultaneously aligning the R T across the Table, after it had been set approximately with a square.

(The blank is turned in the lathe, using a Myford threaded chuck on a Myford / 2MT arbor, so that it can be transferred directly to the HV6 to minimise eccentricity )

Using this set up, I have cut gears from 20T 20DP to 100T Module 1 gears (for a mini lathe ).

I found out the hard way, that the division chart for my HV6 contained an error. Some work with EXCEL showed other errors and omissions.

So DO check that your chart is accurate for the number of divisions that you wish to produce.

A useful tip was to use a peg to prevent one of the fingers from moving whilst indexing..

HTH

Howard

.

Does anyone know who invented the HV6-style rotary table?

Many are described today as being Vertex copies, but I suspect Vertex are a Johnny-Come-Lately themselves, and the original design is much older.

A scamper round the web shows many big names made similar rotary tables in the past: Jones and Shipman, Clausing, Yuasa, Elliot, SIP, Palmgren and several others, branded and unbranded.

My bet is on an American company, because they developed vertical mills, and at early date - 19th Century. I reckon there's a long expired patent somewhere, covering a good design, which is why they are much copied.

Dave

Hardinge made a HV4 but it's an indexer not a rotary table. I don't know if they made a rotary/dividing version but it should be easy enough to find out with a search because Hardinge stuff is very well documented.

.

The Myford-branded ones were made by Vertex

MichaelG.

Since we're talking about dividing heads, there is an excellent series on a George H. Thomas dividing head build currently ongoing on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q57xnGpfhA8

Very well paced and explained, I thought.

Just to drift slightly off-topic, the funnel shape of a blunderbuss was more to make it easier to load than to scatter the shot over a wider area. Similarly with sawn-off shotguns, it's to make them easier to conceal, not spread shot.

Back to the dividing heads...

Rob

Hofmann-type is a good description because it is surely not a Hofman.

For interest, their brochure is here: http://www.hofmann-rt.com/HTH-ENG.pdf

In all the online pictures of Hofmann ones, the notched indexing plate is at the rear of the spindle and there is a spindle lock (Kipp-style lever) at the front.

Robert T: Your dividing head bears a resemblance to my EME model. Not an exact match, but similar in many features.

John

I see the attraction in antique dividing heads but the days of picking up a bargain on eBay are long gone. All too often they are missing useful things like foot stocks, division plates, chucks, worms etc.

I am well pleased with my cheapy BS-0 clone. Many YouTubers try to persuade me that they have perfected the beast by changing the odd bearing, clamp or thrust washer here and there, but I think they are merely stealing the applause from our Asian chums who managed to put together this wonderful machine at such an unbelievable price.

So what would you change?

You might be a bit early there Dave, looking at my 1895 Chas Strellinger & Cp catalogue reprint there are 20 pages of lathes, 12 pages of shapers and just one image of a horizontal mill. No sign of anything like a rotary table but there is something we would recognise as a dividing head.

Here you go:-

Edited By Nick Hughes on 28/03/2022 18:33:03