Thread: Useful gadet for the mill.

I was just watching for some random reason a mrpete video on Youtube. Don't know why, as I usually find his videos rather tedious, but this time paid off, as he used a gadget called a Rose Index.

12index.jpg

May have been posted here before, I don't know, but anyway...

It's obviously not a workholding solution, but what it does allow you to do is quickly index round (and probably other shaped) things (via use of a square from the bed to the index) that won't work in a collet block for one reason or another and need to be held in a vice. Rather expensive to buy, but of course if you have a rotary table you can knock one up in whatever size you desire very quickly. You can do it without a rotary table too, just rather more tedious involving either angle plates if you have them, or a painful combination of trigonometry and indicators.

The other advantage of making your own is being able to configure it however you like. Personally I'd consider changing the square section to a decagon, as you can get 90 degree increments out of the octagon, and 5 sided collet blocks aren't that common, probably because there's not often a call for them (I think I have seen one once though). Only catch with that is it would need to be a decent size unit you were making in order to get a decent length on the reference face. If it's a smaller one, maybe a pentagon would be a better bet. Then again, for the time it'd take to knock one out on a rotary table, you could make a couple of different ones...

Yet another item on the roundtoit list - there have certainly been occasions when this thing would have been very useful for me (especially previous to having a Joe 12 sided collet block).

That certainly looks like a very handy gadget and not just for a Mill either, it could be used in a drill press too. I didn't watch MrPete's video for the same reason as you, but I did watch this simple clip which basically shows how useful the Rose Index is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljs1kp-9bgM . Thanks for sharing.

Looks like ye old filter mount for SLR camera