# Live tool (3rd axis) for drilling bolt pattern on a CXA size QCTP !



## fredybender (Apr 9, 2014)

Lucky enough to have the M19 spindle orientation on the lathe. Even though ther are no spindle brake, the lathe main spindle is held in place by the motor. 

I do quite a few bolt patterns, and this would just help in the fact that I do not need to go on a second set-up do drill the bolt pattern (The small mill and its DRO, will see less work for shure!) 

This is not a milling set-up, but it could be looked into eventually, but the placing of the head will need to be adressed, because of the turret.

A few pictures to show how I installed a Sherline hi-torque headstock, on my CXA size QCTP. The headstock comes with a 3/4-16 OD thread, which is coupled to a 36B female threaded chuck. I would have prefered a ER collet interface, but Sherline only supply ER16, which is too small for my applications. I did run the power of the motor almost to its limits, but this will only be for very short duty cycles.

Drilled  a few holes with a 10mm drill in aluminum yesterday, and it works great!


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## vapremac (Apr 13, 2014)

This has got me into the engineering state of mind.......what are the specs on the
Sherline head ?



William


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## Rapscallion (May 3, 2014)

Live tooling! Nice idea, especially of you make a lot of bolted flanges or rings.
Machinists with manual machines (no M19) could do this too if they had a geared drive to the spindle and set it up to orient the spindle at the desired angular increment for the bolt circle. :thinking: I think ).


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