Rotary tables

Oct 08, 2008 10 Replies

--Have just about given up trying to make do with a Sherline cnc rotary table. What's the next step up in terms of torque? Gotta be 'closed loop', too.


in pork?? =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0

--Here's a video of what I'm doing:

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--For a small part, in this case 1/8" x 1/2" flat aluminum bar it's doable but I want to scale up and do some larger pieces; i.e. 1/4" x 1" al.

m bar it's

num bar it's

actually it looks dead simpler to me the way he's doing it

perhaps your local cnc machine dealer/ repair might have a used rotary table they can salvage from some machine they can sell you for a song

sheesh...toss that sherline and use a shoulder bolt to pivot the fixture on--rotate with a large crescent wrench.

--Heh. Been there, done that but finish is critical and I couldn't get a good enough finish on a grinder.

Who said anything about grinding ?

--Well that was the previous method I used, with part located via predrilled hole, on a pin. Have done this sort of thing with a milling cutter too but it sorta creeps me out and I'd rather avoid it if at all possible. No sweat; job's done for now but I gotta say that Sherline isn't really a 'rotary table'; more of a rotary indexer, i.e. max torque is only achieved when the motor is motionless. Curiously torque is better at high speeds than at lower ones.

--Ah! Because I'm doing this on a 'manual' mill! :-) I've got a stepper on X that I use for rapid table moves back and forth, etc. Makes it really fast for onesy-twosies. For real production I head over to the 4-axis machine but these parts didn't deserve that kind of electric bill, heh.

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