Dividing Head for a Sieg SX2P

[Ace ChandlerParticipant @acechandler49785]

I'm trying to do my research to purchase my first milling machine. After looking quite long and hard at the Clarke mill from machinemart, I'm seriously contemplating the Sieg SX2P from ArcEuro

it's obviously a fairly small machine (compared to a bridgeport or something like that!) – can anyone recommend a dividing head that might work with this. When I've been browsing around for heads, I can find them for sale, but it's tricky to gauge the size that they are.

I don't necessarily want to buy the dividing head immediately, but wanted to do to some planning, for example, if there is a better small mill to buy, then I'd rather know that up front I suppose I'm concerned about it having odd sized 'T' slots or something that rules out compatibility with a diving head I might want to buy in the future if I did purchase the SX2P

Thanks, Ace

[Ace ChandlerParticipant @acechandler49785]

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Unless you have a lot of dividing to do I would suggest that a rotary table with a set of dividing plates would be a better bet, not only will it allow you to do a lot of curved cutting, it will also have a slightly lower ctr height when used vertically and be considerably lower when being used with the spindle pointing upwards. The benchtop mills can be limited in head room so every little helps particularly once you add in the height of say a chuck on the dividing head, a drill chuck in the spindle and a drill bit.

[Ace ChandlerParticipant @acechandler49785]

thanks, that's useful, and I see that they sell those at arc euro as well.

Ace

[David George 1Participant @davidgeorge1]

Hi I bought a rotary table for my 16v mill and it is a 4 inch size and it has done every thing I wanted but the clamping slots which are cast on to outside of casting cause clamp studs to slip as I tighten it sometimes and I wish I had seen the one at Arc euro which uses slots to clamp with i also had to make an adaptor plate for my one to but th Arc one has one. Dont forget to buy a chuck to fit and make sure it is a low profile one. There is an adaptor to fit a dividing plate etc to there one when you need it.

David

[ZebethyalParticipant @zebethyal]

I use a Warco HV6 rotary table on my SX2, which some might argue is a bit big, I bought it at a show so it was slightly cheaper. This version includes a set of dividing plates, plus I liked the fact that it has 4 Tee slots rather than the usual 3.

[Ace ChandlerParticipant @acechandler49785]

Posted by David George 1 on 01/05/2019 08:09:27:

Hi I bought a rotary table for my 16v mill and it is a 4 inch size and it has done every thing I wanted but the clamping slots which are cast on to outside of casting cause clamp studs to slip as I tighten it sometimes and I wish I had seen the one at Arc euro which uses slots to clamp with i also had to make an adaptor plate for my one to but th Arc one has one. Dont forget to buy a chuck to fit and make sure it is a low profile one. There is an adaptor to fit a dividing plate etc to there one when you need it.

David

would you happen to have a link to the one you bought?

[Dave HalfordParticipant @davehalford22513]

The BS0 head has a 4" center height

Some tables have proved to be a bit fragile. Depends what you want to make.

[not done it yetParticipant @notdoneityet]

Dave is right. Buy cheap, buy twice can be expensive where rotary tables are concerned. Even items from previously recommended suppliers might now be made ‘down to a price’ rather than ‘up to a quality’.

It has been mentioned on the forum recently that the earlier Vertex models were far more robust, when made in Taiwan, than the current offerings (which are sourced from elsewhere).

I would trust Arc in preference to Machinemart, for my engineering equipment supplies.

My first lathe was purchased from Machinemart around 25 years ago. My current lathe wasn’t.

[Author]

Posts