No space

[Roger HulettParticipant @rogerhulett83124]

I need to clamp a steel disk in my rotary table/indexer's three jaw chuck and mount it all on my small horizontal mill in order to cut a cam wheel.

However,even with the table turned down to it's lowest point,there is insufficient space to fit it inbetween the table and the cutter.

Any suggestions ? Thankyou.

Edited By Roger Hulett on 26/08/2016 16:55:29

[Roger HulettParticipant @rogerhulett83124]

Mounting a chuck and an indexer

[Brian WoodParticipant @brianwood45127]

Hello Roger,

​Can you use a smaller cutter, or do you have the option of eccentric machining on the lathe to make the cam?

You may be forced to cut some of the shape by filing in the vice, perhaps rather lo-tech but quite realistic I would think.

Regards

Brian

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Mark out the two flat faces of the cam on your gear blank, you can use the rotary table to get the angles if you want.

Make up a ped that can be bolted to teh mill table that the blank is a good fit on, place blank over peg and clamp it down to the table with one of the marked can faces set true along teh table and make a cut.

Loosen can and rotate it slightly before clamping back to the table and take the next cut.

Carry on like this until you reach the other face of the cam. A little file work with then blend in teh facets of teh many cuts.

All you are doing is manually rotating the part for the next cut rather than using teh rotary table.

Just to remind other members this is the cam

And the way we came up with to machine it. No lathe available

[Brian WoodParticipant @brianwood45127]

Hello Jason,

​It wasn't clear from the post that you and Roger had worked out the cam shape, nor that a lathe was not available.

An elegant solution

Brian

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Thats why I thought I would put up the details, we have had a couple of other threads on the subject and it saves others like yourself going to the effort of posting blind replies.

[Roger HulettParticipant @rogerhulett83124]

I may have misled you by implying that a lathe is not available,as it certainly is,I was under the misapprehension that cutting a cam could only be machined on a milling machine with a rotary table.

Would cam cutting be easier and more accurate if machined on a lathe ?,and what is the technique for doing this.?

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

The lathe method is best kept for cams that have rounded flanks not flat ones like yours. It also only cuts the flanks and not the base radius

[Author]

Posts