Your Opinion please

When we are working with making arcs on our machines, the choice of what we want to use is highly influenced by whether we want to truly index something, or set specific angles. Collet blocks, spindexers, super spacers, and dividing heads are examples of indexing tools. We want to divide a circle into even intervals, even if we are only going to be using one or two of those intervals. The tooling I mentioned, and others, do that well and accurately. The other thing we might want to do is to make, say, three curved slots in a plate at a specific radius, to specific and different angular lengths in the specified clock positions. Now, I am quite sure you can do something like that on a dividing head, but it is certainly not the easiest way to go and would be prone to error. A rotary table is nearly ideal for the job (but would be even better if they had adjustable stops for multiple parts.) The two types of angular tooling do not overlap very much in what they do well, but a rotary table with dividing plates does make that possible. The question to ask if you are buying tooling is "Am I going to be making divisions, or am I going to be setting specific angles?" Or both...
 
I bought a used 5C spin index on CL for $20 and have used it with good success. I have several rotary tables and two dividing heads, but I still don't own a set of collet blocks. The collet blocks and spin index are the lowest cost, and you can do a lot with them. Even though I have more complex tools, for simple things it takes less set-up time to use the spin index. Making a square or hex head bolt is a good example. I generally don't break out the dividing head unless I'm cutting a gear. Someday a set of collet blocks will show up on CL at a decent price, and I will snap them up. :grin:

GG
 
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