Horizontal Milling Arbor

[francist]

It works for me, I don't know about you. But worth looking into.

Hmmm, interesting. I did think of using a milling cutter holder (aka end mill holder) as a source of the MT2 end and turning off the "holder" portion. The arbor part could then be attached to that.

In part I steered clear of turning down a perfectly good end mill holder and also in part because I could not verify the construction method of this holder. It looked (at least as far as I could see down the dark interstices) was that the taper and the holder were a marriage and not turned from one solid lump of metal. This brought to mind a previous fellow who had tried something similar only to discover that under significant load (he was using a 4" diameter horizontal milling cutter) the married parts became un-married. Great excitement happened!

My logic, flawed as it may be, was that my circular cutter at 2-plus inches in wheel diameter would likely load the holder more than a, say, half-inch shank end mill and if the holder was indeed two pieces press-fit together I didn't want to find that out under power. I doubt a gear cutter would do that, but I figured if I had the arbor I would soon enough end up with a larger milling cutter of similar bore and be inclined to use it. There were also thoughts about the sleeves and if tightening the arbor nut would want to draw the stub arbor out of the holder (I guess a stop collar could prevent that) and also the end mill holder typically does not have provision for the drive dogs. At least the ones I have don't, so spinning in the taper became a concern. Again, not necessarily with a gear cutter or a half-inch end mill, but with a larger wheel cutter.

I think in the end I had so many unknowns about repurposing the holder that they outweighed the unknowns about making one from scratch! So I went from scratch. I did make it shorter than the regular arbors though, by about two inches, as most gears should end up being cut centred on the table anyway.

I like your suggestions though, and I expect they would work well for what you do. Thanks for bringing them up!

-frank

 

[francist]

Well, aside from the usual goat rodeo that happens when I do something new for the first time, it appears to work. Overshot the bore for the tapered mandrel and had to Loctite the blank on, undersized the wheel diameter by nearly 10 thousandths, but still managed to pull off 44 teeth 24 DP in aluminum. Lots of fun!

Thanks for looking.

-frank

 

[T Bredehoft]

Frank, you gotta be proud of that, I surely would be.

 

[francist]

Thanks Tom, I appreciate you saying that.

-frank

 

[FOMOGO]

That came out great Frank. Nice when a plan comes together on the first attempt. I too am familiar with the old goat rodeo. Cheers, Mike

 

[brino]

Frank, it looks perfect from here!
-brino

 

[francist]

Thanks Brino!

 

[stioc]

View attachment 297196

Wow, that came out really nice. Did you chamfer the edge of the teeth on the lathe?

 

[francist]

Thanks, and yes I did.

I turned the blank slightly oversize, drilled and reamed (in retrospect I could have bored and got a better fit to the mandrel), mounted blank to mandrel, turned to final OD and chamfered the two edges, then took the whole affair to the indexing centres to cut the gear. So really, cutting the teeth was my last operation.

-frank