Anyone Cutting Spiral Flutes Manually? (sherline Mill)

Lee in Texas

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I saw a website from England in which a guy used a Sherline headstock for a dividing attachment. Makes sense. It already has the right threads for their chucks. He uses dividing plates, but I would think it's fairly straightforward to connect it to a handwheel. Has anyone done that?
 
Do you have the link for the web site. I would like to see what he has. Since the hand wheels that I have seen use the location hole in the spindle, it would be a simple thing of finding or making an adapter to hole the plate to the hand wheel, or at least that is what I'm thinking.
 
Do you mean connecting the dividing head spindle to the table hand crank, so the table and dividing head spindle move (and rotate) in a fixed relation to each other? Getting old school here!

Cam milling:

Helical gear milling:
 
I've got an old Brown & Sharpe horizontal mill that came with all the gears for helical cutting, but the head is missing. During my research for ideas on a home grown remedy I came across a wooden setup that seemed to work fine. I think it was in Machinist Workshop mag maybe? A quick Google search turned up this little nugget.
http://www.hobby-machinist.com/thre...k-with-manual-mill-drill-this-possible.19572/

My plan is to mod a spindexer and use 5C collets or a chuck.
 
Do you mean connecting the dividing head spindle to the table hand crank, so the table and dividing head spindle move (and rotate) in a fixed relation to each other? Getting old school here!

Yes. I want to get old school...in small scale. I have never seen something like this done on a Sherline. I only found the website with a Dividing Head while searching for a Sherline headstock.
BTW I ordered a Sherline headstock.
 
Found the link. Apparently the author of the article is a member here.

http://bullfire.net/4th_Axis/4th_Axis.html

I have that issue. I read the article again, just a few days ago. I didn't bring it up just because I was thinking of something much smaller. Also- I'm not sure pulleys or sprockets can get the desired reduction ratio in the amount of space available between a Sherline crossfeed handle and dividing head spindle. I think it will need gears. I could certainly be wrong on that, though.
 
I think you're right. The rocker arm in the article had a really tight spiral. I brought it up more for the ingenuity factor. I think some of the principles could be employed to get a shop made set up that will work.
 
Some interesting problems to work out. Making a tabletop sized universal dividing head would be a great project, though. Great for those who don't have CNC, anyway.
 
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