Hi,

I've got two rotary tables and although one of them is CNC, (it's for a smaller model machine).

I'm sick of spinning the handles at a 90:1 ratio and having to lock up and unlock all the time on the manual mill whenever I want to make PCD's or Hexagon milling. The Big Rotary table I do have, doesn't feel very rigid either when I need to set it up at angles.

So I did a little brief reading on Harold hall's book on dividing, and it would seem the old fashioned solution to this problem would be to use a dividing head.

So I've looked around for some models to see what's affordable without going ballistic on the price and the best deal I can seem to find is a 5" rotary table that comes with a chuck on the bay of all bays. **LINK**

So I've got a link there and i'll put a picture here…

So although the picture is a little askew, it's got a robust looking construction and a chuck that I know will fit it. The tailstock looks a bit shabby but it doesn't need to be suberb as the head.

So yeah, just throw some noise at me. Think it's a good idea?

Michael W

One thing I have noticed is the scale on the rotary plate doesn't reference degrees like a rotary table. So In order to divide the wheel, I would need to know the maximum number and then divide that number into how many divisions I want, 2, 3, 4, 8, 16, 32 etc..

Thanks, yeah I've looked at other tables and it's probably got more going for it in terms of value, the other ones are made by Vertex badged, notably, you can just throw financial sense out the window if you're not careful.(Maybe, theres better accuracy in the construction, but i'd have no way of telling that, and as far as I know, anybody makes vertex stuff, could even be made by this non branded variety.) 

I think theres locking handles on the other side of the assembly, and possibly some adjustment screws. The picture is slightly off because I needed to scale the image for the forum without just placing a massive screeny infront of everyone.

Michael W

Edited By Michael-w on 08/10/2017 13:21:16

Ah, well that's a relief, I suppose the numbers have the "0" abbreviated.

Perhaps I need to explain my other RT's a bit more. I have a sherline cnc mill with a cnc rotary table, it's very well made and good for what it does (I was very lucky to not have to pay for any of that kit) but they aren't machines that can handle heavy materials and I don't think they- as a company- make any bones about that. Great for small aluminium, plastics, and what not but certainly will only do steel on the side of caution.

The bigger rotary table does quite a mainstay of the milling work on my much larger warco table top. the chuck is about 3-4" big.

There are some really really irritating things about it though, that I'm not too keen on. One is the assembly is just like a big cast moveable right angle plate, that secures with one bolt that goes through the whole axle. It isn't very sturdy basically and even doing a light plunge with horizontal milling will cause the setup to deflect, no matter how tightly you do it up.

The handle twiddling is slightly annoying and I respect that it's a common problem with RT's. I had to drill a 4 hole PCD on a lot of big plastic spigots, I had nine to do in total and it felt a bit silly having to swivel the handle like a mad man to index it, you don't get a feel for that until you do it, believe me. I will keep it for genuine rotary cutting though.

So, for one, I really like the rigid design on this one. No alignment problems with the chuck, coz it goes straight on. And as far as I understand it, you can just spin the detent to the next hole in one fell swoop, rather than 20-30 turns of the handle. I'm glad to see someone else has it and likes it.

I do like the idea of the Stevenson collet blocks too, they look like a really great way to get some basic indexing on the cheap, hats off to him, he found a gap in the market. Unfortunately I don't have many ER32 collets, I have tons of ER40, so I would have to buy a lot for that to get a decent range.

PS: You'll have to tell me what the landmark is J.B, otherwise i'll pass it without realising it.