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Cutting splines (External )

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Mark Foster 110/05/2011 13:23:24
34 forum posts
Hi all I need to know how I go about finding and ordering A cutter for a spline . I presume its like a gear cutter . Where do I start to look . I think a single point cutter would be a bit slow .Material 4140 . part Drive shaft for my MotoGuzzi motorbike !
chris stephens10/05/2011 15:33:22
1049 forum posts
1 photos
Hi Mark,
What shape are the splines, some can be cut with a normal end mill. This type of spline are simple vee shaped ones and can be cut with the corner of the end mill at the half past one o'clock position when looking at the end of the shaft. The other type would need a special cutter to do the job, again depending on the shape. Can you post pictures?
 
Your 4140( UK equivalent = EN19), if in the annealed state, is not difficult to cut but will need to be heat treated, and almost certainly ground afterwards, for a drive shaft.
chriStephens

Keith Long10/05/2011 16:28:23
883 forum posts
11 photos

Hi Mark

As Chris said in his first question - what shape are the splines?

Many for automotive use - including bikes are actually involute forms, like gears, not just straight sided grooves in the shaft. Can you get a drive shaft from a breakers and use the splined end of that for you application, probably be a lot simpler.

Suggest you use Google and have a look for splined shaft suppliers or re-conditioners. They are about and will have the tooling available to make up a custom shaft for you and heat treat it as necessary. A phone call to them could save you a lot of time and trouble (and expense) and be no more expensive than getting hold of a cutter which won't be cheap.

Keith

Edited By Keith Long on 10/05/2011 16:28:48

John Stevenson10/05/2011 19:28:17
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5068 forum posts
3 photos
Mark,
I cut quite a few splines and most automotive splines are Involute and at an angle of 30 degrees.
 
So far I have never seen a gear cutter type cutter that can do these, not saying they don't exist somewhere, only that I have never seen them.
 
You can work these out just like gears as they have a split DP, something like 16/32 where 16 DP is the size of the spline but depth, addendum etc are worked out for 32 DP.
 
Unlike gears where you add two to the number of teeth, for splines you only add one.
 
John S

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