Shop Built Indexer?

Re: Shop Built Indexer?

Scott Hogsten

>Dominic there are several pretty easys ways to do this. It might not be quite as accurate as one of the premade plates but it sure is cheap. The trick to this is obviously finding a way to index the plate while you drill the holes. The easiest is to use a tablesaw blade, a 60 tooth blade works great. The way that I did this in the past was to take a sheet of MDF and cut out a circle on the bandsaw and in the center I drilled a 5/8 inch hole. I then made a 5/8 dowel to go through this hole and through the arbor hole of the tablesaw blade. Put some double sided tape onto the mdf and use the dowel to center and stick the blade to the mdf. I then went to my drill press and attached another sheet of mdf to the table. I put a 5/8 drill bit into the chuck and drilled a hole into the mdf to act as a guide for drilling the holes. You can now put the dowel through the blade and mdf into this guide. Now all you have to do is make some kind of simple stop to index on the teeth of the blade. Once this is done offset the piece of mdf on the drill press so that you are drilling holes at the diameter desired and start drilling. You might want to use a clamp to help prevent the disk from turning while you do the drilling. Once you have the holes drilled you need to make a hole to fit you headstock. Remove the blade from the mdf and drill another 5/8ths inch hole in the mdf attached to the drill press. Without moving anything on the drill press put the mdf indexing plate back onto the press and use the 5/8th inch dowel to center it. This disk is now accurately centered under the drill press arbor. Get a hole saw the same diameter as your headstock and drill the centering hole. At this point you may want to spend some time marking the holes for thirds, quarters, etc. You could also do this with an old bandsaw blade wrapped around the outside of the disk but you need to get the overlap correct. Another way would be to wrap a piece of paper around the outside of the disk, take it off, the divide it using a ruler, and tape it back on then do the drilling using this to index.

Scott Hogsten

Re: Shop Built Indexer?

John Lucas

>Dominic

I built one years ago for my old lathe. I just attached a disc to the handwheel and drilled holes. I marked off the holes by using dividers. I calculated the distance between holes and set the dividers. Then I stepped off the distance allthe way around. It was off a hare so I made a minor adjustment and did it again. When the last step of the dividers hit the first hole I had it perfect.

Then I drilled the holes. I attached a bar to the top of the lathe and drilled a hole. I just drop a pin in.

Now that I have a 3520 which doesn't have indexing I'm looking at building another one. I'm thinking about doing roughly the same thing. I use the handwheel a lot so I want to make the indexer function like a handwheel. I also want to make an attachment for my vacuum pump while I build the same device. I'm trying to decide whether to remove the handwheel and have another one built or to simply attach the wood or metal to the existing handwheel.

Re: Shop Built Indexer? *LINK*

John U. - NC

>I remembered Bill Johnson had made one, and I had to search for it.........the link is below.

Good luck!

John


Fluting Jig - Bill Johnston

Re: Shop Built Indexer?

Richard Allen

>Hi Dominic

A couple of ideas for shop built indexing.

If you think of this as 2 indexing schemas then you can easily get 1 degree indexing.

Make a wheel that has 36 holes

Make a plate that covers 1/4 of the wheel which has 10 holes each spaced 9 degrees apart. By sequencing down the plate and rotating the wheel to the next closest available hole you will be advancing the lathe one degree at a time.

This is something like a vernier caliper. The attached drawing is a crude representation of this idea. You could put marks on the wheel that would show up to the left of the plate as the wheel is turned. Those marks could be different colors to represent different sequences. Like 48 point indexing could be green and 10 point could be red....

The other idea is about the locking. Have 10 pins in the plate that slide toward the holes in the wheel. Put a set screw on each of these pins so you can lock the pin either engaged or disengaged. The part of the pin which goes into the holes in the wheel should have a slight taper. That slight taper will make it easy to insert the pen and the taper will also lock in the position. The set screw will stabilize everything.

Richard

Thanks for all the input!

Dominic Greco in Richboro PA

>

Re: Shop Built Indexer?

Tony - Memphis

>Howdy Dom. I've been tinkering with ideas on this subject too. I do spindle turning (well, if you want to call it that! - I'm still learning) and would like to be able to do some fluting. reeding, and such. One thought I have had is related to the grinding index plates we used in the cam shop where I used to work. These plates were indexes to locate the lobe centerlines relative to the pin on the front of a camshaft. The engaging pin was spring loaded and tapered. All the holes were tapered too. Not a large amount, but enough. Anyway, just a thought I wanted to throw out. If I still worked there, I'd fabricate something using the same setup and have the shop make me a plate. I do miss that resource! Our machine shop did more government work than anything, but it was not really frowned on too much.

I was thinking about making a plate to fit over the threaded shaft (I have a jet mini) and making a pin that would be held by an arm bolted to the housing or onto the bed. I was thinking about drilling and tapping some holes possibly, haven't gotten that far.

Let us know what you come up with. I'd appreciate any tips/thoughts/etc.

Tony

Re: Shop Built Indexer?

Chuck Ludwigsen

>Tony,

Have I met you at the local Mid-South Woodturners Guild meetings? If not, we meet at "That Wood Joint" this Saturday at 9:00. Subject this month is "Skill Building".

Hope I see you there.

Chuck in Memphis, TN.

Re: Shop Built Indexer?

Tony - Memphis

>Hi Chuck. No, I've never been. I have no skills to speak of, so I should go! Not sure I can go this weekend though. I tell you, my time in the shop is so limited, I don't get out much! I hope things go well for That That Wood joint in their new location. I was real upset that they had to move and lost all that space. Their wood selection was wonderful. I went by and made a donation when they announced the thick mahogany close out sale. Good bargain. I hope to make some nice cabriole legs out of it someday. If you happen to see a short bald guy with a mustache and just plain goofy looking wandering around That Wood Joint...its me.

Tony