Mounting Base for Stepper Motor

[Charley Davidson]

This is the adapter plate I'm making for my stepper motor to mount on my gantry, the hole pattern was slightly different and I also need to make a coupling/adapter to connect the gear reduction shaft to the shaft in my stepper. Here's what I've done so far.

I had no way to drill a hole as big as I needed or accurately so I laid out the hole & chucked the stock in my 4 jaw. As you all know I'm a bit tooling challenged right now and a bit green. I racked my brain on how I was gonna mill this piece with what I had on hand, then I remembered seeing a picture on here of a rectangular piece chucked in a 4 jaw and the light came on. To center the piece I scribed an X from corner to corner then I put my live center in my tail stock & slid it up close to the piece and started centering it with the 4 jaw. After centering it I put my drill chuck in my tail stock along with a silver Deming 1" drill and bored a hole to start my cutter in. I really had to Jerry rig something up and made several changes of tooling & setups til I ended up with the big tool holder.

I couldn't cut the hole all the way through to the full diameter because of the reversed jaws were in the way on the back side. I brought the hole to dimension/diameter now I'm gonna mount it on my Burke mill & fly cut the back side till the hole is all the way through (Basically a back rake operation) I'll do that tomorrow night and post pics, I have some video also.

 

[ScrapMetal]

Bill,

I thought of that too but looking at his pictures it doesn't seem like he has a whole lot of "extra" space to the jaws. Adding the thickness of a board would make it almost impossible to hold that way. Is there an alternate way to hold a piece like that?

For future reference

Thanks,

-Ron

 

[Charley Davidson]

Thanks Bill I will try that in the future but it would not have worked for me this time as I had clearance issues with the saddle and the part colliding if I got any closer.

I faced it off on the lathe as I didn't have a way to hold it down on the mill.

 

[Rbeckett]

What about the remove chuck and use a standard face plate with double sided tap to hold the item in place trick. I have seen some extremely well adhered parts that required solvent to break down the adhesive to release the part. That would also give you just a bit more room so you could extend the tool a bit and not wory about a crash so much. Might help next time...
Bob

 

[ScrapMetal]

I see now Charley you were pretty much at max opening with the chuck. Ron the only alternativbe I can think of at the moment is to use the backing board method and clamp it to a faceplate to bore it.

"Billy G" :biggrin:

Thanks Bill. That sounds like a good solution.

-Ron