The Home Machinist!

I finished the dividing head so here is some photos of the project
this is the plate with the most holes

boring one of the plates

the fixture for mounting the plate on the dividing head is also used on the lathe to machine them

start of drilling the indexing holes once all 3 plates are done I'd drilled close to 500 holes took about 5 hours

all 3 plates are done I also have 1 undrilled extra plate not shown.

each plate has 6 rows drilled and each row is indexed using the strips of paper glued to the rim

this is the cast tail stand for the dividing head

completed dividing head

completed tail stand on the mill. I'm milling a gear testing out the dividing head

view over the tail stand in my hurry to try it out I didn't center the cutter so I ended up with a gear with its teeth leaning to the right. Good news is the dividing head indexed all the way through and ended up right back where it was supposed to be

the gear will go into the scrap bin and get remelted

I put a cover over the gear train to keep the chips out.

Couple of views of the dividing head

the sector arms are necessary to keep you from getting lost on the hole count

you can see the high tech cover in this shot,so I made an aluminum one once I'd finished the test gear.

just another view of the lopped sided gear. It took 30 minutes from start to finish of the gear

The dividing head is on my home made mill (Gingery design)
For less than $100.00 I have a dividing head which will work for me I had a great time building these machines, Mill,Shaper,and the dividing head plus all the cutters.

How did you index the plates to drill the holes? It's kind of a chicken and egg problem.

Steve

Steve
I have a photo on the first page of using the indexing strips glued around the rim to guide me on drilling the holes. There is a cursor clamped close to the rim of the plate that guides me as I drill Gingery show how to make the strips he calls it dropping perpendicular lines.
If your worried about perfection then you probably won't try building a dividing head.
For me as its a hobby, I do not worry about perfection and don't plan on building anything for NASA. For my use this thing works great. It was a real fun project and was not that hard to make.

OK, I see. You are using the strips for the divisions, and each circly uses a different strip.



I have a Pratt & Whitney dividing head and I managed to find one plate for it. I may try to sit down and see what circles on the other two plates can be done from that one. Probably a succession of doing what I can do on the one, then using the other two partial plates to do the rest. Not a big priority right now. Too many other things to do.

Nice job on the head. Looks like it was a fun project.

Steve

HI
I built one of dave's dividing head back in 1986 and broke it out to make some gears the other day.
I made a foot controller and used the gears to rotate a pot.
here is a youtube of the foot pedal its the second one on the video.

have fun
Tom