# Tiny face plate to mount tiny chuck on tiny rotary table.



## David Kirtley (Apr 14, 2013)

Still getting some of my backlog projects dealt with.  I had picked up a small 2" chuck at HF many years ago on sale for like $15 with thoughts of using it on my wood lathe. Well, that never happened and it just sat in the wood lathe tooling box. A few months ago, I saw the little 3" rotary table at HF on sale for like $50 and couldn't refuse. Well, tonight I got busy and worked on joining the two together.  

I sawed off a chunk of 2-1/2 in 12L14 and chucked it up in the 3 jaw chuck as close to centered as I could and away from the chuck face. Faced it and turned most of the diameter to even it up. Flipped it around and faced the other end with it bottomed out against the jaws. Turned down a register boss for the back of the chuck and then turned a stub for the chuck to thread onto. Threaded it with an M12-1.0 die to match the chuck and fiddled with the length so the chuck would thread all the way down to the register but still not interfere with the jaws of the chuck. Drilled and bored the center to 0.25" for aligning it to the rotary table.

Still to do:  Cut slots for mounting hardware for the rotary table and make a tapered alignment pin to fit the register hole in the face with a 0.25" bore for a pin through the chuck. Maybe I will make a dividing plate for it.  I really don't need it as I have a 4" rotary table with dividing plate but I figured this would be fun for small stuff.

The faceplate and the chuck. Isn't it cute?




The chuck mounted on the faceplate. You can see the 3" chuck in the background for comparison.



Sitting on the rotary table.


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## Rbeckett (Apr 14, 2013)

David,
That is cute as a button.  What size lathe is it sitting on?  It looks like it would be a perfect fit for a small 7X10 or 8X series machine.  I have been looking for a decent quality rotary table for my small mill that I could also use on my 7X or 9X, but no joy yet.  Maybe after I get some more of my medical bills paid off I will be able to afford a better quality or maybe even a littlle larger set-up for my mill and 9X.  Looks great though and dont forget to snap some pics of it in use when you can please.

Bob


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## Daver (Apr 14, 2013)

Damn, I never see stuff like rotary tables at HF! What ami doing wrong? They aren't even listed on the web sight... 

Cute! Love it, would love that for my micro mill!


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## David Kirtley (Apr 14, 2013)

It is sitting on the headstock of my 7x14. All the usual suspects carry them: Micromark, Grizzly, Busy Bee and others.  The were discontinued at HF and that is why it was cheap.  I had never really even cleaned all the cosmoline off mine. Just now when I looked at Micromark, I noticed that they have a M6-1.0 screw hidden in the bottom of that gunk to align it. Should make it much easier. I thought it just had a tapered register. I have not tried yet to put it on the cross slide of the lathe to see if I can mount it vertically there yet. I was thinking of mounting a 1x1 bar on the back and putting it in the milling attachment on the lathe. Mounting it directly would potentially be more useful.



Rbeckett said:


> David,
> That is cute as a button.  What size lathe is it sitting on?  It looks like it would be a perfect fit for a small 7X10 or 8X series machine.  I have been looking for a decent quality rotary table for my small mill that I could also use on my 7X or 9X, but no joy yet.  Maybe after I get some more of my medical bills paid off I will be able to afford a better quality or maybe even a littlle larger set-up for my mill and 9X.  Looks great though and dont forget to snap some pics of it in use when you can please.
> 
> Bob


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## Rbeckett (Apr 14, 2013)

Yeah it was definately the HF red..... Actually I do love my little 7X10, it does pretty good work for something so puny.  I just made the second to last payment on my 9X so I will be bringing it home soon.  I can hardly wait to do some larger and longer work.  Once I get the 9X home I think I will save up and buy the LMS bed kit and extend it to 16 inches, then add a 4 or 5 inch rotary and dividing plate kit to my mini mill.  That should give me tha ability to correctly position bolt holes in various patterns rather simply.  Little by little I continue to add stuff to my wife "Bob is dead, yard sale".  Hopefully it will be a while before she gets to sell all my goodies........
Bob


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## David Kirtley (Apr 14, 2013)

I put the 14in bed extension on mine. It really makes a world of difference. The biggest being for drilling. I was really frustrated by the 10" bed when I pulled out drill bits. Just not much room left. 

There are some nice alternatives that don't cost much for dividing. Harold Hall has some on his website and his book on dividing in the Workshop Practice Series is really good.  Jose Rodriguez has one he builds in his Make a Milling Machine video as well. I would have gone that way had I not favored my time in the money versus time equation this time. 

This was really the recovery from a failed experiment.  I had made a plate for it before. I have an ER32 holder for my wood lathe and tried to make a faceplate out of AL to use but between my poor skills when I tried before on a big lathe at work and poor material choice, I gave up and bought a 4" table and dividing plates from LMS.

The original plate was not stable enough or machined well enough. It had too much runout and the clamping was, as you can see, a bit wimpy. I had also not made provision for centering it on the table. Kind of the perfect storm of beginners mistakes:


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## Rbeckett (Apr 14, 2013)

Jose' has some eally good mods and tweaks too.  I have one of his CD's outlining the 7x10 and some of the uses he gets it to do.  He does get some superb work out of his, but it is very heavilly modified now over the years.  I'm definately not proficient enough to build a rotary table yet.  I am still learning a lot of the basics and unlearning a lot of self learned bad habits from before I joined here.  
Bob


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## David Kirtley (Apr 14, 2013)

Worst thing that can happen is to break something on the lathe or scrap the material. Anything that goes bad is just part of the learning process. LMS sells every single part for replacement.  I can field strip the lathe in short order now. It is just a matter of practice. Sometimes I have to make a few tries at the part. 



Rbeckett said:


> Jose' has some eally good mods and tweaks too.  I have one of his CD's outlining the 7x10 and some of the uses he gets it to do.  He does get some superb work out of his, but it is very heavilly modified now over the years.  I'm definately not proficient enough to build a rotary table yet.  I am still learning a lot of the basics and unlearning a lot of self learned bad habits from before I joined here.
> Bob




Here are the lessons I got today:

Knurling was not too good this time. I didn't have enough stock to leave some to hold in the chuck. The material was free pieces of brass that they use for materials strength testing in a class at school.  It slipped holding onto the thin part of the shank with the chuck. I would have been fine if I had taken the time to pull off the chuck and use a collet. Made some grooves in the knurling to hide the places I screwed up. 

I couldn't get the threaded end to go into the register on the rotary table. Their fine quality control in the factory in India didn't notice that the hole wasn't threaded all the way. Took me a while to get that figured out. I tried every thread size close to it and no cigar. Made a couple pins that I had to toss (out of the 1018 scrap.) Finally took the screw out of the back of the rotary table and ran a tap all the way through.  It is amazing how much better screws work when the part is fully threaded.  Interesting mix of sizes and measuring systems. The threaded end is M6-1.0, the shaft is 0.25". The head is, well, some size. I never measured it.




Still, after recovering from the mistakes, it comes out. All it cost me was a few pieces of free steel. Even if I had bought it, it would have been less than a dollar's worth. Next up will be the milling of the slots for the clamping bolts on the table. I am going to reverse the faceplate on the rotary table and screw it down with the pin and add a couple clamps for good measure. For fun, I might mount it on the lathe milling accessory so I don't have to unmount the vise off the milling table.


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## David Kirtley (Apr 14, 2013)

All finished now. Had to use a 1/4" HSS spiral router bit as my endmills were not long enough. Whatever, same thing. I did have one indexing mishap. Started to move to the next position and stuff wasn't cleared out of the way. Rotated the piece a bit but I moved it back. Not enough to cause any problems. You would have to look real closely to see that it was off. I might have to make some special t-nuts for the rotary table. The bolt slots in the table are too small for my clamping kit. Probably also should pick up or make some washers for the clamping screws on the faceplate. It works like it is but long term it would probably be better. Really glad I made the aligning pin. Works really well. I have not put a dial gauge on it to check for runout but from watching as it rotates, if it is off, it is not by much.




All put together:


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## David Kirtley (Apr 18, 2013)

Here it is all mounted up and nearly ready for business. The reason I went through all this was to be able to use the rotary table on the lathe in the milling attachment. Specifically to make rotary broach cutters. I am sure I will find plenty of other uses for it as well.


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