Horizontal Milling Arbor

[kb3guy]

Probably an impractical option, but can you dial the gear cutter in on the lathe and grind the ID with a toolpost grinder?

I actually thought about doing that! Unfortunately, a toolpost grinder isn’t in the budget either, at the moment.

If I had to choose between grinding the import cutter bore and modifying my OEM arbor though, I probably would go for the cutter, since it’s more easily replaced. I think I’ll give building the mild steel arbor a shot, and see if it develops runout after a few cuts.

 

[benmychree]

Your soft arbor should work fine, and even hard arbors sometimes (more often than not) do run out a little, but it does not make much difference in cutting a gear. I have ground the hole in metric cutters out, and also made thin bushings for the larger size metric cutters, for them, I cut a piece out to accommodate the key.

 

[bfd]

can you open up the gearcutter to 7/8 grind it or bore it with carbide I have turned down the od of endmills by using carbide tools worth a try bill

 

[kb3guy]

Well, here’s today’s progress. Pinned, forge brazed and rough-turned between centers. Need to take everything down another .010 or so and do the threading, nut, and spacers.

This is the first time I’ve turned between centers - I like it! Minimal fuss.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[kb3guy]

Well, I got this thing tidied up and working. Cut my first gear with it - a 24-tooth, 16dp gear. I did make a mistake in indexing, so the first one is scrap, but I'm satisfied that this arbor will do the job. I ended up changing the threads on the retention nut to take the nut from the 7/8 arbor since they're so close in size, and borrowed some spacers from it too (which wobble up and down a bit on the video, but their end faces are still parallel for keeping the cutter vertical - that's the important bit, right?) Thanks again for all the help and suggestions, it's been an educational project.





Here's a short video of the machine cutting a tooth:

 

[markba633csi]

Nice job on that

 

[brino]

@kb3guy,

Great job!
Thanks for posting it.
-brino