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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jan 2020
    Location
    Sydney
    Posts
    76

    Default D1-4 Receiver for rotary table & mill

    A while back I bought an HV-8 rotary table to use on my mill, but the setup isn’t all that straightforward, especially when transferring a part from the lathe and vice versa. The rotary table has 3 T-slots which I find inconvenient for clamping (4 would be better), and I had no easy way to mount a lathe chuck to it for holding round parts.

    My first attempt at improving this situation was to drill 3 holes through my 8” 4 jaw chuck around the periphery at 120 degree intervals. Fairly hard to locate such holes so they don’t hit anything, and still involved removing and replacing the D1-4 mounting studs. Plus it ended up unbalancing the chuck – so overall not a great solution, and not one I’m going to use for my other chucks. It seemed like a better idea would be to make a D1-4 receiver that I could bolt to the rotary table or mill table.

    So after a fair bit of Googling and drawing up in Fusion 360 I ordered a piece of 120 mm diameter 1020 (wanted 1214 but although priced on Edcon’s website they had none) and started machining. The design doesn’t seem to leave much room for error, so I took it slow and double-checked everything very carefully as I went, which meant it took some time to complete.

    In case you are feeling adventurous and want to have a go at this, I’ve attached my Fusion 360 model and some drawings. The critical dimensions were taken from IS0 702-2:2007. Here’s how I approached it:

    - I started with a longer piece mounted in my 4 jaw and faced off, turned the circumference, then cut approximately to size in the bandsaw before flipping and returning to the 4 jaw in preparation for facing the front, creating the mounting taper, and boring out the hole in centre. I took a fair bit of care dialling in to make sure the faces ended up parallel.

    - Next I machined the front face to depth, ready for creating the mounting taper. I used the compound to machine the taper, and to set the angle I used a dial indicator to measure the offset against the tailstock shaft as I moved the compound, using the formula distance moved x sin(7.125). According to what I could find via Google, the face and taper should both touch the chuck with no gap. Once that was right I drilled and bored out the centre hole slightly larger than the size of the hole in my lathe spindle, then it was over to the mill for the remaining operations.

    - First was clamping to the table on parallels and drilling & counterboring the 4 mounting bolt holes. The 4th hole was diametrically opposed to one of the 120 degree holes for mounting directly to the mill table. I marked the ends of the diameter through these holes with notches to use for aligning the following operations.

    - Next I mounted the part on the rotary table (mounted vertically) and dialled in against the D1-4 taper. (In one of the photos you can see a removable locating fixture I made to help with this. It has an MT3 taper on one end, and a large washer that fits the hole in the receiver on the other end.) I then used the marks mentioned above to set the table to the correct angles for drilling and boring the holes around the periphery. The cam holes need to be 19 mm H8 tolerance, so I drilled, bored then reamed them to size. After that I used an end mill to counterbore the holes for the cam locating pin/spring assembly, then drilled for an M8 thread and threaded manually to a depth of about 12 mm to accommodate the 10 mm M8 caphead screws.

    - The final step was to mount the part back on the mill table, and drill & bore out the D1-4 stud holes. I had left these until last because either they or the 19 mm cam holes would need to be cut interrupted, and I thought that the potential inaccuracies resulting from this would be less important for these holes. Due to the large amount of interruption – almost 50% – these holes really needed to be started with a large end mill, but since I didn’t have one long enough, I had to use a 16 mm drill, which of course wandered off more than I had anticipated as it went through. I was able to correct most of this by boring to final size (16.7 mm), however I later found some fine tuning was required so that the studs on all my chucks locked correctly without the need to adjust the studs when moving chucks between the new receiver and my lathe.

    - That left making the locating pins and assembling. For springs I used ones that were made from 0.9 mm piano wire (they need to be fairly stiff), and the cams were purchased from H&F.

    Afterthoughts:

    - For use with the HV-8 rotary table it would have been better to use larger diameter stock and increase the diameter of the mounting bolt hole circle. As it stands I had to round off one end of each T-slot nut so they could be positioned far enough in towards the centre of the table.

    - By the time this and a chuck are mounted to the rotary table, the work piece ends up sticking out a fair way, which can be an issue when using the table in the vertical position. Even though the rotary table seems as solid as a rock, it does deflect slightly when machining parts without additional support.

    - Although it cost a bit and wasn’t easy to make, overall I am very pleased with the result, not only making it fast and easy to mount any of my chucks on the rotary table, but also providing the ability to transfer a part from lathe to mill and back again without removing from the chuck.

    Mounted to rotary table.jpg

    Mounted with 8 inch 4 jaw.jpg

    Mounted with 5C collet chuck.jpg

    Fit.jpg
    Attached Files Attached Files

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Aug 2008
    Location
    near Rockhampton
    Posts
    6,216

    Default

    That is pretty impressive.
    Gold, the colour of choice for the discerning person.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Location
    Perth WA
    Age
    71
    Posts
    6,458

    Default

    Nice work Alex.

    Bob.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Sep 2008
    Location
    Riddells Creek, Vic.
    Posts
    831

    Default

    I agree there is no room for error when making a Camlock spindle nose, I made a D1-4 to D1-3 reducer years ago to allow the use of smaller chuck and faceplates etc on my Colchester.

    D1 -4 to -3 Spindle Nose.jpgD1-3 to D1-4 Adaptor.JPG

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Jun 2011
    Location
    Melbourne, Australia
    Posts
    129

    Default D1-4 Receiver for rotary table & mill

    Hi Alex,

    I have a couple of questions, if I may (and apologies if I have somehow missed the detail in your post)?

    1) How did you ensure the semi-machined adaptor was rotary table were concentric? (I'm guessing the rotary may have been dialed in to the mill spindle, and then the same for the adaptor), and

    2) Has a register of sorts been included so that the adaptor can be removed from the rotary table and refitted with a level of repeatability?

    Tidy work, btw.

    Cheers
    Salv

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Jan 2020
    Location
    Sydney
    Posts
    76

    Default

    Salv, good questions. I did think of making a register on the rear of the receiver that would mate with the MT3 taper in the centre of the rotary table, however I decided against that because of the way it would limit the length & diameter of a workpiece sticking out the back of the chuck. Also the runout on the MT3 taper in the rotary table was not zero, so I thought it would be best to leave some way of fine tuning the concentricity if necessary, and finally I thought it could be fairly difficult to make a register that locked into the MT3 taper and allowed the rear of the receiver to sit flush with the table.

    What I did in the end was make a separate locating fixture consisting of a short MT3 taper with a 16 mm shaft on the other end that fits into a thick washer made to fit the hole in the receiver. That gives me a sliding fit between the MT3 taper in the rotary table and the D1-4 receiver, allowing the rear to sit flush with the table. It ends up less than 0.1 mm runout, close enough for many operations and less than some chucks. If I need it to be better than that, I can slide the locating fixture out through the hole in the receiver and dial in, referencing against the D1-4 taper on the receiver. Since I usually leave the D1-4 receiver on the rotary table, this isn’t something I need to do often.

    Hope that makes it clear. The locating fixture details are included in the Fusion 360 file. The strange looking finish on the 16 mm shaft section is due to a cylindrical grinding experiment on my small surface grinder gone wrong...

    Locating fixture parts.jpg Locating fixture fit to rear.jpg

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Aug 2015
    Location
    Melbourne, Australia
    Posts
    843

    Default

    Nice work Alex,

    I have the same RT and have long been considering the same - albeit with an adapter for my spindle thread. Thanks - inspiring stuff.

    Greg.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Jun 2011
    Location
    Melbourne, Australia
    Posts
    129

    Default D1-4 Receiver for rotary table & mill

    Thanks for your response and explanation, Alex.

    It's on my list but I don't have visibility of Fusion 360 files atm. It makes perfect sense now - you essentially made yourself an alignment gauge, or in effect a 'removable register. Nice, I like it.

    Cheers
    Salv

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