Cutting gears on a lathe

[Dave Harding 1Participant @daveharding1]

Is it possible to cut gears on a Lathe if so how would you do that.

[Dave Harding 1Participant @daveharding1]

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Yes. Two major methods involving different approaches.
1/ the lathe spindle holds the cutter and the gear is held in some other fixture.
2/ the spindle holds the gear and is indexed round while a small additional spindle is used to do the cutting.

Put google into images mode and then enter "cutting gears on lathe" and you will find a mixture of examples. Then add 'youtube' to the end and you get some more.

Reading that lot should use up most of Sunday for you.

[_Paul_Participant @_paul_]

Both Myford and Boxford had/have their own dividing heads designed for indexing on the lathe with the cutter then mounted between centres .

Cutter mounted between centres setup:

Toolpost cutter with gear blank mounted in chuck.

[WALLACEParticipant @wallace]

Seem to remember in MEW there was an (to my mind) elegant way of hobbing a gear on a lathe by using a stepper motor to rotate the blank.
Simple electronics (TTL divission) plus an optical coder was used to generate the ‘locked gearing’ between the cutter and the blank.

W.
I

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

If your gears are not too large a tooth then you could also index the spindle and use a tool ground to the correct profile to plane the cuts much like a shaper, this is the principal on an internal gear

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

BTW are you talking about clocks or big stuff?

[Ray LyonsParticipant @raylyons29267]

Search for "Hobbynut" on Youtube. Here is a practical engineer who gives an excellent demonstration on gear cutting using the lathe and milling machine. The methods he describes could easily be adapted for making in the lathe with a suitable dividing attachment.

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