- Joined
- Feb 2, 2014
- Messages
- 1,222
Ray C has a thread on making miter gears and that got me thinking about two years back I wanted to make a gear rack. I soon realized that cutting a rack on the mill would only allow the length of the rack to be what you could fit under the Z axis. I needed a gear box to hold the cutter at a 90 degree to the mill spindle. At that time I tried several different ways on making 90 degree gears but none turned out very well. I followed Ray Cs thread and made a couple almost identical to his and they didn't look too bad. I rounded up some raw materials and had at it.
This is the clamp for around the mill cartridge.
Here is the vertical shaft and the two gears that I made. It has a 5/8" by 18 thread.
I took a chunk of steel and turned part of it round in the lathe and bored it out for two bearings.
These are the parts I made for the horizontal spindle.
First assembly of gear box.
I added a steel plate to the spindle and another to run up to the cartridge clamp to keep everything rigid.
Here it is fully assembled.
And mounted on the mill.
This shows the first few teeth cut in a piece of 1/4" square stock.
More teeth and how it fits to a factory made gear.
This took me about 2 weeks to complete working when I could and changing many things as I went along. The gear box was made around the materials I had in stock and the diameter of the gear cutters. If the cutters were of a larger diameter then the whole unit could have been larger and beefier.
The gears have Module 1 teeth I have no idea just how strong they are or how much abuse they will stand. I was pleasantly surprised at how smooth and true everything runs. I hand fed the gear while cutting and it went right though the key stock without complaint. I just moved over 0.124 for the next tooth.
It definitely is not a heavy duty gear box but for my needs it should work just fine.
Now I can't remember what I originally wanted to make the rack for but I am sure to come up with some ideas.
Thanks for looking
Ray
This is the clamp for around the mill cartridge.
Here is the vertical shaft and the two gears that I made. It has a 5/8" by 18 thread.
I took a chunk of steel and turned part of it round in the lathe and bored it out for two bearings.
These are the parts I made for the horizontal spindle.
First assembly of gear box.
I added a steel plate to the spindle and another to run up to the cartridge clamp to keep everything rigid.
Here it is fully assembled.
And mounted on the mill.
This shows the first few teeth cut in a piece of 1/4" square stock.
More teeth and how it fits to a factory made gear.
This took me about 2 weeks to complete working when I could and changing many things as I went along. The gear box was made around the materials I had in stock and the diameter of the gear cutters. If the cutters were of a larger diameter then the whole unit could have been larger and beefier.
The gears have Module 1 teeth I have no idea just how strong they are or how much abuse they will stand. I was pleasantly surprised at how smooth and true everything runs. I hand fed the gear while cutting and it went right though the key stock without complaint. I just moved over 0.124 for the next tooth.
It definitely is not a heavy duty gear box but for my needs it should work just fine.
Now I can't remember what I originally wanted to make the rack for but I am sure to come up with some ideas.
Thanks for looking
Ray
