I have read and seen many things on milling with the attachment for the lathe. Most of the tools and fixtures I have seen are made by guys with a milling machine. I would like to see some things that were made on the lathe with the milling attachment.

Tony

Hi Tony;

The things below were made with just the lathe and the milling attachment.



Auxiliary drilling spindle.




A kind of crude, but very effective dividing head.




A wrench for black powder shooters.




Misc milling jobs




Gears (known as clock wheels).




A different type of gear, new one on the right.




General everyday milling chores.

Dean

hey Dean, yes indeed thanks, I had thought you made your stuff with the milling machine. Good to see what the milling attachment can do. I am still after reading a few things on it just what a dividing head, plate does exactly ! I'll understand it sooner or later.
I am chomping at the bit to get my lathe I do know about that ! ! few weeks I hope !

Tony

Hi Tony;

For the first couple of years that I had the Taig lathe, I didn't have a mill, and made everything with just the lathe and milling attachment. I have a mill now, so some of the projects on my pages are done only with the lathe, and some with both the lathe and a Taig mill.

A dividing head will let you divide a circle into a given number of portions. For instance, if you want to make gears, it will turn the gear blank to the individual positions of each tooth one at a time.

You can do a lot of the same work with an indexing plate mounted to some sort of spindle. The amount of spaces the indexing plate can divide a circle is limited to how many index holes the plate has.

Boring stuff follows, but may give an idea how the dividing head works.

The dividing head divides by use of a worm gear. The ratio of the worm to the gear tells you how many divisions you can get per full rotation of the worm. A crank handle is attached to the worm gear to rotate it. So, if you have a 60:1 worm gear in your dividing head, then for each revolution of the crank handle you get 6 degrees of a circle. That in itself will divide a circle into 60 perfect parts. If you put an index disc on the end of the shaft that has 60 holes in it, you can use the holes to index to finer divisions. In the case of a 60:1 dividing head with a 60 hole index plate you can divide a circle into 3600 individual equally spaced parts. Very handy for doing things besides gears, too. If you need to make a bolt hole pattern in a piece of material with something like 16 holes, you would have a hard time laying them out by hand. Very easy to do with a dividing head, though, and for some numbers easy to do with a simple indexer, too.

Ah I see now how it works. i was curious why i had seen so many people adding them to their lathes. Like the seconds on a clock.

Thanks Tony

I will be getting the milling attachment soon. I need a set of End Mills, I understand that not all end mills are the plunge type,,,? is this true? I want to be able to plunge cut if needed. I know there is a name for these, what ? Also sizes, for my ship modeling work I would need miniature mills, the sets i have seen go to 3/16 which is fine for modeling. Can this size mill cutter be used to mill parts for smaller sized engines too?

Thanks Tony

Tony, you need center-cutting end mills for plunge cutting. Most two flute end mills, that I know of, at least, are center cutting, but many four flute end mills are not. Just make sure the spec for the end mill says center cutting if you intend to plunge with all sizes.

I don't know how small/large an engine you intend to build, so can't really say if 3/16" is suitable for your needs. If you are going to buy a set, make sure you know the shank size of each end mill in that set. Many sets look like a good price and have a lot of sizes included, but may have sizes that won't fit your collets.

You might be best off to buy the individual sizes that you actually need, and again, make sure the shank will fit your collets. For light milling jobs some of the cheaper import end mills work well. If you can pop for good ones, (Atrax is about the lowest priced of the good brands) so much the better.

Two flute end mills are usually best for aluminum. For steel, four flutes. On brass, take your pick, but four flutes generally make a better finish. In the smaller sizes like 1/32" to 1/8" you will find that most of them are four flute. I use four flute for all metals when they get to 1/8" or smaller.

One good way to start milling is with the Taig 1230 end mill set. Since they are inexpensive and double ended it give you a chance to do some milling without worrying about breaking a $20 single ended tool.

When you get a bit more experience you'll have an idea of what types of tooling will best meet your needs.

Thanks Jeff anf Dean, Yes Ok Center Cut, got it. The mini's I saw were all 3/16 shanks which would work with my collets, I'll shop around a bit and see what's out there in sets. Maybe I can get a bigger set including the minis.

Tony