Rotary Table Basics 

Thats a great tip, ill probably do that going forward!

I'll show that in an upcoming video. It does establish true rotation if the hole is out. Excellent comment.

Bingo.

Yep. Just did a job for their resident machinist and he gave me that as swag for the effort.

You get it.

Not as much fun but I suspect a commercial hydraulic engine hoist would be cheaper and will fold up for storage.

Barry Gerbracht None of us are. If you figure that out, let us know:) All I did was make/fab/weld up a tool cart for the heavier stuff and lower the table of the mill to height and lock the wheels and slide it over. Teflon or any kind of high density plastic works great. I have a hydraulic hoist to lift the heavier stuff onto the table. Obviously It needs to be not top heavy. I have the lower shelves with enough items to keep it in check. It obviously can then be rolled out of the way and allow more room for work space that’s non confining.

If you think about a single degree as one complete 360 degree sweep of a second hand on a clock face, things may start to get clearer. Just pretend, one degree = one hour. For every degree, there are 60 minutes. If you could have a really big clock face and fit 60 lines in between each of those 60 minute lines, you would now have the seconds. 60 seconds to every minute. Everything is just a smaller part of the group before it. Just like telling time. Decimal angles can get confusing and will always need conversion before a machine can be adjusted to position correctly. The error is usually in the interpretation. 20.3 degrees, is not 20 degrees, 3 minutes. Hows that for a clear explanation??

The wheels are 14 spoke 7 segment assemblies. Intricate.

Awesome! Thank you!

Glad to help

Ruger was my bulldogs name. he passed away on that date. I really enjoyed his company. tough loss.

nice math but i believe the marks are on the side of the table (which has the t-slots). if one could only realign the indicator on the base or the table had a movable marking ring.....

Notice that there are always *two* pairs of lines lined up when you're using the vernier if you have the extra lines. It's a lot easier to be sure you're right on the line that way, and not being fooled by parallax (the angle you're viewing the scale from).

I have to say your comment is based on end use assumption. I never stated the hole was a pivot hole. If the hole was a pivot hole, it would have to be the center of rotation of the slot feature if the two worked together.

Joe would have to disassemble the table and cut out the base casting to extend the cutout for the degree indicator and redrill & tap for the adjustment screw. Or quick and dirty, just make up a thin metal piece with a double offset to come out of the degree indicator notch and run along the base until you have your zero. It would be exposed to damage but so what. Since the slots and the degree markings are on the same piece this is the only way it would work.

Correct. Nobody seems to be willing to go there. No feature to pickup....Not a problem. Stick around.

I may do that.

Its planned.

393stroker here is the video. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-GjezShYnoEU.html. I miss toms techniques, he had some great videos. Unfortunately he started to fade from RU-vid a few years ago. I still reference his chart when grinding HSS bits. Chris

Great technique I use that all the time to get it closed then I dial it from there👍

Hold on to your seats guys. Got some cool stuff coming up.

@@shadowdog500 Yep , sad to see that. Tom loved his plunge cuts!

@@joepie221 I cannot wait Joe. I find your technique of teaching to be one the best and easiest to understand. Thanks for you contributions.

You're going to love it.

Metric circles have 512 degrees

@@farmerdave7965 uhh, what?

@@OuijaSTi At one time the military used 400 degrees. They called it the grad.

Great idea. These things are heavy.

Steven Haskell Did that 25 years ago. Nothing is worth injuring yourself or damaging machinery.

Drop the mic.........

I agree with Michael. Pull the table apart, shift the zero, and give it a good clean before reassembly.

I don’t believe that would work as the degree increments and numbers are part of the table. Hard to move without machining them off and re doing them, which wouldn’t be out of the question for some... (assuming the markings are not aligned with the slots)

@@JaysonWallis or you could machine a new ring to press on over it or slot and screw on so its indexible

@@richardcranium5839 That works also. Less work too.

Shifting the zero pointer would cure the problem.

Got more coming. It gets better.

Yep. Already done.

No problem 👍

Much appreciated.

The flex part is LocLine brand coolant hose. 1/2". Its available all over the place and on my website store. I made the aluminum end plates.

Glad you enjoyed it!

To be honest, I have never used it for anything, but I am open for suggestions.

@@joepie221 I have put 3MT drill chuck in it, and used it to cut slots in spur rowels. Probably not what you would do, but worked rally well for me. Love your videos, Thanks for the effort to teach.

Hey west Weld ,I use mine for a quick alignment of a 3 jaw chuck. Slide the chuck on add fixings , place taper with additional parallel length say a lathe tail stock alignment tool tighten the chuck to the taper tool and tighten the chuck fixings. and wallah centered chuck.

@@tonyhughes7056 And the 12" rotary table comes with an MT#4 taper.

@@joepie221 Hi Joe, I have a cheapo Chinese rotary table with an MT2 hole down the centre.....And I'm currently making a 1" ID clamp out of a 1.5" x 2" piece of 6mm cold rolled MS. This is to secure the slide of a digital scale to the lathe tailstock barrel to give me DRO on its travel. I have a damaged memory and am so fed up with getting lost trying to remember how many turns I've turned the handle on the 8TPI screw! So far, I've machined the ID on the lathe in the 4 jaw chuck, and have a blank MT2 arbor with a 1.5" end. I'd previously used it for something or other, so it already had a clamp washer and 8mm thread. So today I machined a 1" boss on it, and installed it on the rotary table with a small drawbolt up the bottom. I centred the 1" boss OD to the mill spindle just as per your video and have rough sawn the bulk of the waste out of the clamp workpiece and mounted it on the arbor. I'm now just trawling your videos for machining tips when using a rotary table. But hopefully from my description, you can imagine what my workpiece looks like, and I'm thinking an MT centre bore seems perfect for tasks such as this where 360 degree machining of a perimeter is needed ....mostly 1/4" wide strap, but with an 'excursion' on the X & Y axes to do the lugs for the clamp bolt, and DRO slide attach point. Like you say...lots of maths & dimensions, so with my bad memory.....one slip up and it's a scrap bin filler! But I've done one of your great tips and put a sharpie mark on the X & Y carriages for the centre point, so if I get lost, I can quickly get back to a good reference point. So West Weld......for this sort of task I think the MT bore is good to have, otherwise I'd have to mount a chuck on the rotary table, use the inner jaws to hold the workpiece, and it all 'wedding cake layers' up to leave no Z height left on the mill to get a cutter in! BTW I'd also previously made a short MT2 plug, with a centre drilled top, so can use this to quickly centre the table to the mill spindle. Couldn't do that today because I had to tighten the drawbolt on my arbor BEFORE mounting the rotary table on the mill table. Stay safe everyone. Cheers, Allan

Thanks for watching.

There are numbers stamped on the rotating part of the table so that you don’t need to count how many degrees past zero you are. These numbers are what need to be moved as well as adjustment of the “tag” (assuming the markings are not aligned with the slots)

@@JaysonWallis Pretty sure Brians point was to rotate the table so the slots were aligned the way you want and move the pointer so it lines up with the zero on the table.

​@@barrygerbracht5077 Correct. I see now where I was wrong. Cheers

bcbloc02 b

Glad to help.

The possibilities are numerous.

Hi Chuck. Thanks for stopping by. This series will go for a few, and I hope show some very time saving techniques. Stay tuned and rub Howie on the head for me.