I can't begin to describe the pleasure l get watching these video let alone what l learn. What a fantastic way to spend your holidays... I had to content myself with the kids at the beach!
with every video from you i want to build a machinist shop in my basement more and more... even if i don't know what to do with it. You just make it look so enjoyable :D
My advice is just DO IT! Start small with used equipment and build up from there. The sense of satisfaction of building your own creations is fantastic. Check out my little shop. I make scratch built stationary steam engines during the winters in upstate NY. Best of luck. Fred Ontario, NY
Hi Stefan, absolutely enjoyed seeing the clever use of a stepper and Arduino for indexing! May I suggest an upgrade for your next design iteration is to have a look at Clearpath Servo’s by Teknic. I feel your application would be enhanced by incorporating a rotary position encoder to ensure absolute positioning feedback on each index. Cheers! www.teknic.com/products/clearpath-brushless-dc-servo-motors/
Hallo Stefan, As always, i really like to watch your video! Have you release info about your indexer? And also you have change your website (maybe because of professional use?) but some article are now not available anymore will it be possible to publish them once again? Keep publishing content it enjoy and entertain our journey (especially this day of social distancing it help me to escape and not to think about this f... Virus)
What a testament to both you and your customer. He wanted the right tool to do the job, not a pair of vise grips. You engineered the right tool to exacting specifications. The electronics were icing on the cake. Great work. Thanks for sharing.
Way to finish the year on a high note! (Casually making a rotary axis controller for the public domain!) Thank you for letting us in on your project solutions.
I thought the first half of the video was impressive until you brought out your rotary table electronic indexer, now I’m flabbergasted ! Amazing work Stefan!
Stefan, always a delight to see the elegance in simplicity without sacrificing accuracy in performance. My mind immediately went to automating the quill and Y axis as a next evolution in upgrades. Keeping with simplicity, the notion of a cable and spool driven by a stepper attached simply to the quill arm. Then a similar drive link to the X axis. Leaves fabricating a spring loaded double nut for the X axis screw which has been on my bucket list for quite some time. Like all things, any design can be taken to some next level and with time and expense, we have to stop at some point and say 'good enough'. You post the details and this is going to be my next project. Thank you for contributing to many of us who want to take our projects to the next level. Congratulations on a job well done!
if you want an excuse to have/make a 2nd printer you can get one setup with a 0.8mm or 1mm nozzle and reduce your printing times by a ton since your lines are double thickness and you can print 0.4mm high layers with ease. Your parts may also be stronger since larger layer heights produce stronger prints. You lose a bit of detail but gain a ton in time for iterating on an idea. Thanks for all your contributions and happy new year!
Love that indexer If you set up a limit switch on your mill to increment the divisions you could have a dumb CNC gear cutter! Cut the tooth, retract the cutter and hit the switch, then continue to cut the next tooth. It would massively speed up an operation like this! Even better if your mill has a reversing powerfeed
Hello Stefan, thank you for the nice video. For those who do not have a lovely tool makers micro-scope; I have used IC Measure (which is free) and a cheap USB micro-scope. You have to have a microscope scale to make accurate measurements but they are cheap on eBay. One has to be cognizant of the focal plane when doing the measurement. Thank you for sharing the divider. Happy New Year!
Just to say, your English is excellent, and I am English! I was a minute in before I detected it wasn't your first language and even then it was only the reversal of the V's and W's that gave it away. Lovely to listen to, thank you for speaking my language so well.
I really enjoyed this video of yours. In 1947 I had to deal with spline drives while building two Zündapp KS600 motorcycles and 61 years later I finished the first replica and 4 years later the second KS600 replica. Again splines are problems. But not for you. Very good job as always so I thank you for it and for the many others.
This way a spline drive gear (harmonic drive) could be built. Without backlash and lots of torque. Thanks for the great inspiration and excellent clean performance!
Stefan , nice video ! I used optical comparators at work for many years ( 40 plus working in gage shops in Detroit , Michigan , USA ) when you want to check the width of a angled surface ( across the spline you were checking ) turn your cross hair to match the angle on one side , zero out your read out ( or take a reading on the micrometer ) turn your cross hair to the opposite side . then move that axis to line up the surface . what ever the read out measures ( or micrometer ) is your dimension across the top or bottom of the spline , depending on what feature you wish to check . I hope this is clear , and is helpful . John
Stefan, You are an inspiration. Thank you. I am looking forward to the indexer info. Please also do a video on heat treating with oil quenching. I understand why you don't want a smokey shop! Your lessons on German precision are fantastic.
Wow! That indexer is awesome! I've been thinking about the "electronic leadscrew" projects I've seen online for a long time, and this is basically the same thing! Very encouraging to see it done so simply!
Stefan I Enjoy watching your work. It puts a smile on my face and I always learn new routes to take in my work. I saw you and Adam singing on this old Tony's video, I have no comments on that one!
...and you, whilst I see YOU here. A harmonic drive is also the thing you might not have known how much you needed, until now. : ) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_drive My own teardown of a poor, little electrically dead one: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-02wR0U_7SfM.html
@@BrendaEM nice teardown! I’ve seen harmonic drives made cheaply with 3D printing to explore the concept, but super cool to see a real one… such precision!
I hope you realize that once you add a stepper to the Quill you will be made redundant! Happy new year, thanks for all your efforts! Best regards from Johannesburg
That Isoma microscope is perfect for a job like this. Very nice piece. I love the Arduino, I use them for many large and small projects. Very nice job on the spline drivers and the automated indexing drive.
Btw. I have used Fritzing for past projects to design circuits, lay out PCBs, and then transferred the design to Fritzing for production. I used it for the PCBs that was missing on my Schaublin 22. They are a bit expensive for one-off PCBs, but i like the (free) software and the ease of ordering PCBs. They are located in Germany.
Thank you for documenting the mastery exhibited in your project. The toolmaker's microscope is a valuable metrology tool, but you don't need the grand old item. Just rig a mount for your digital camera (with macro lens) on the mill ram, or on the lathe toolpost. Then you can measure spacings with the DRO, and analyze captured images on the computer for angles and such. The machine tool serves as a giant microscope stand and a larger working envelope, the camera provides the microscope optics, and processing the image yields more geometric analysis capabilities. If you acquire a telecentric machine-vision lens for a DSLR camera, you can make absolute measurements with resolution as fine as the camera sensor pixels, down to a few microns. You can use the fixed focus on DRO Z to optically measure depths of holes, steps, gaps, and other features that you can't physically reach.
Very useful information, as always. I'm currently converting my own rotary table to be stepper motor driven (using a PIC micro-controller+LCD, rather than arduino), so all your hints and tips were really helpful. I particularly like the way you handle displaying the rounding error, and prevent it from becoming cumulative. That's a nice detail, which I shall be copying. Thank you.
What a treat to enjoy a new video, really cool how you grind the custom cutters on the cutter grinder, hope you can show more of the process sometime in the future, the electronic indexer seems really nice to use, thanks for sharing!!
Superb work. Nice to see the tool makers scope. Just a point of interest... if you're making a tool and you care more about the part than the tool then you make the tool to fail in case of accident. Brass would have been perfectly adequate, cheaper and easier to work and in the event of catastrophe, the brass shears and the part is saved. If the customer told you to make the tool out of hardened steel then fair enough but I'd have used something softer than the part under the circumstance of working with priceless vintage aircraft parts.
Just a thought on your nut drivers, if you had milled a hex on the outside rather than a square drive inside you would given the operator the chance to use either a socket or a ring spanner if access is limited.
@@johnferguson7235 That is entirely possible, but I suspect that the engines are war time manufacture when such luxuries were less common . My thought of a hex does not however preclude the use of a torque wrench or a socket. Thinking of working on machinery from a mechanics point of view access is often restricted, hence it would be nice to have option of a spanner.
@@johnferguson7235 of course there's no reason you couldn't use both square and hex drive on the same socket, but even without the square drive you could presumably just use a hex socket to drive the spline socket
These two vintage micro-machine guys are loving that SOMA, looking at that casting it clearly looks as heavy as you conveyed to us viewers, nice Soma really has advanced a long ways since that microscope of the tool maker. You distracted us from what we came to see you making an electronic indexer so back to viewing your video now. We discover pliers marks and missing parts. Only use certified materials that come with the certs, you gave great advise here. Nice work great video.
Nice setup! All you needed for this setup was to automate the Y axis moves with a motor drive. Than you could have just moved the quill. Or better yet how about putting the same setup on your CNC router and programmed the broaching tool movement and push the index button from its control.
Haha, during broaching, my mind was wandering away, thinking about exactly that, an additional motor for the y-axis, to infeed. But I think in the end that would be to much work for a specific job. Thanks for watching!
I made a similar indexer years ago, but using a PIC18F microcontroller instead of an Ardunio. Its also a two axis controller so it can do automated operations like gear cutting or timing belt pulleys with a rotary table. It can also do basic two axis milling such as line drilling (Drilling a series of holes in long strip), or slot milling.
That was superb from start to finish, thank you. Microns? millionths? .005 degrees? Is 2019 going to introduce us to the Planck Unit? All the best to you in the New Year.
Years ago I had to tool up for very similar parts and form ground myself up a broach that worked really well. There are so many ways to do this , all of which are great fun.
You are in a different league my friend! I thought that just cutting the internal spline manually was good and then you go and trump it by adding a stepper motor and controller............awesome!!
When I first got (my first) 3D printer a number of years ago, I thought that I would mostly use it to prototype but after a while I ended up just using them as finished mechanical parts. Printing in petg and nylons, particularly carbon or glass filled ones, can produce very durable prints. Using brass heat inserts for threads really helps as well.
tolles video. some suggestions: your sockets are missing the slot for the retaining ball to snap into. so they will just fall off the handle. you should also stamp them with your makers mark and "50 spline x (diameter)" for identification.
I was thinking the same thing, and wondering how I'd do it. For the detent, I'd probably use a spherical burr. But I bet Stefan would have a much better way.
I have a software design suggestion. To stop you from accidentally bumping the rotary encoder while indexing, have a lock mode and a change mode. Perhaps double press the button feature on the rotary encoder and the angle/division indicator led will blink and you can change it. Double press again and it stops blinking and becomes locked. Or use double press for zeroing and single press for adjusting. Ideally an extra button would set lock/unlock mode.
Another excellent video Stefan thank you. It was really interesting to see the electronic indexer as I have been thinking about something similar on my lathe leadscrew for independent feedrate control and for cutting any thread pitch without changing the gear train each time. Great work !
For an electronic leadscrew there is a great commercial product, the ELS2 / ELS3. Thats what I have fitted to my lathe. Unfortunately only in german: www.rocketronics.de/els/
I've been working on doing the same thing - the big challenge is that you need to coordinate the leadscrew with the spindle speed. If the two are not mechanically coordinated then you need to have precise feedback of both the spindle speed and the leadscrew speed. In my case, I have optical encoders for both. In theory, I can send the spindle speed data to a microcontroller and it can do the math to figure out what the leadscrew RPM should be. In practice, I still need to mount all the electronics reliably and do a lot of testing. That's when change gears just seem like the easier way (especially now since it's below freezing in my shop).
@@StefanGotteswinter That's product is almost exactly what I've been working on as a hobby project. Thanks for linking to it. Glancing at the pictures, it appears that it can also control the cross slide. I hadn't considered that, but it doesn't seem like it'd be that hard to add. With that addition you can do tapers, spherical cuts, threads on tapers, maybe even knurling (without a "real" knurling tool). Though it'd be easy to add mechanically, the code itself would be a lot more work and probably require more than a simple Arduino based control box could handle.
I was thinking along the same lines with optical encoders on spindle and leadscrews with software to do the rest. For variable feedrate during cutting it is straightforward but as you say the challenge is with the threading. But that is part of the fun in working it all out ! If you get it all working and have a channel then I’m interested. I’ve just finished building my 4th CNC machine (episode 23) out on my channel so the project list has just bumped up one . . .
Great Vid again Stefan. I wouldn't be without my electronic indexer. Got a hold of an open source Hex Code about 10 years ago and bunt it into a PIC 18F452 Chip. Put the hardware around it and its been great. Save's a lot of did I, or didn't I scenarios. Looking forward to seeing your indexer build. Cam
Just a minor comment Stefan. Most commercial sockets have a little indentation in the inside of one of the square faces. When you get your extension bar you will notice that it has a sprung ball on one face of the square drive. The idea being that when you fit the socket to the bar it doesn't fall off.
This is really cool, many times these rebuild of old machines means building new parts. Building tools for the rebuild effort is interesting. Thanks for the tutorial.
Great add-on, since 99% of mistakes comes from a glitch in the brain that misses a count, it would be easy to adapt the different ratios of the rotary tables, like 40:1, 80:1, 90:1, 120:1 or anything different. This is something I'd like to add in the shop over here... ;) Have a great New Year...!!!
Another outstanding video. Seeing as you don't even have a ½" socket set ;-) let me suggest the final touch, which would be an outside knurl on these sockets, helping the mechanics to more easily twirl the nuts and giving better purchase on them with slippery fingers. Commercial sockets are also usually chamfered on the ID so you can slip them onto the nuts more easily, especially if the nuts are mangled. Yours don't seem to be. Then again, I know mechanics are divided on that because it decreases the purchase of the socket on the nut, and people have been known to grind down that chamfer again, at least on some sockets they keep for borderline cases. Also, knowing your style from previous videos, I'm almost certain you etched some kind of maker's mark onto these sockets, along with a designation of what they actually are, and I'd love to see that in a video as well.
@@StefanGotteswinter Seems like there's a much tighter fit between the tool and the fastener on these than with ordinary hex tools, so they might be very difficult to engage. Still I'm curious if a sharp edge would be useful for cutting/straightening damaged splines. As for outside knurling - mechanics use power tools now.
Stefan, you make some nice tools. No tool? No problem, watch this folks while I make something! And not some half ass temporary thing like I would make, but a proper tool. Along with Robin and Peter Stanton, you guys are my favorites on You Tube just for that reason. Happy New Year sir.
Stefan, an absolutely 1st class job, the stepper motor drive is a great way to get those splines done, very impressive, hope you have a safe and enjoyable New Year.
Always great stuff! Your filming and editing kind of make me feel like an actual guest in the workshop; I should probably bring beer. I'm pleased to say that I actually went back and watched all your earlier videos these past few months; it took a while. It was interesting to see the evolution of the production process and to learn more of the Gotteswinter backstory. On that note, do you ever miss the CNC router or ever think about building the "ultimate" home shop CNC bench mill? Now that would be something to watch; an highly functional OCD perfectionist with mad skills putting his stamp on the DIY home shop CNC milling center. Cool!! ;-) Also really like your penchant for capturing ideas in your notebook while watching television; so much better use of your time and kind of gives things a Divinci vibe.....without the television, of course. I suppose he probably did his best work in church to keep from falling asleep. Yeah, services ran a bit long back in those days. Regarding the notebooks; have you even considered using a really thin steel rule as a bookmark? Could come in handy at times. That will do it. Thanks again for vast catalog of cool content and all the time and effort that goes into making it.
More German Engineering , beautiful job . Bosch used this spline type fastener on their P7100 fuel pump for the delivery valve holders , that is the only other example I have ever seen .
Have you considered adding a foot pedal to advance the indexer? I can imagine it could speed things up a bit. That'd make it so yours hands could work the quill and the rotary table's brake without ever needing to let go. You could also mount the electronics in a way that allowed you to see it without having to look away from the work. It might sound silly, but reducing repetitive motions also reduces mistakes (and general tedium).
Hi Stefan, great video as usual! I wanted to mention, I have some 40:1 ratio gearbox nema 23 steppers that would be great for this sort of project if you need more torque. They're pretty affordable.
I hear (at 9:18) that you’re an EEVBlog fan. Cool. ;) (Also cool: these parts and the video you did of making them! Not to mention the rotary automation stuff.)
Another great video and cool implementation. I am in process of doing something similar and was going to use a Arduino Esplora that has built in slider, joystick, 4 buttons and integrated display. Saves making the circuit board.
are the holes in the sockets you made up large enough to clear the studs and did you make at least 1 deep version of each size. so if the threaded stud sticks up more than 15 or 20MM above the top of the nuts you might be in trouble you may also before you harden those .. throw them in a lathe and do a boring bar cut with a 5MM radius tip to give the sockets the able to grip on the retaining balls of the ratchets or extensions.. does not take much. having sockets that continuously fall off the end of the tools is annoying. . if they feel the tools are too loose.. they might have them copper plated.. yes it would create an issue with wear but it could make them fit even better.. they might take and plate each tool a little thicker.. so they have a range of fits ..
Great video Sir ! I had an idea, as you said they will probably use this on nuts that may have been marred by vice-grips or pliers so what if you make one socket with some notching like an inverted castle nut so the user can clock it around any damaged part of the splines. Or just simply omit/mill out some splines say leave only 30 at 120* intervals. Just an idea, because i think Aviation guys do not want to damage a special(discontinued) nut like that. Thank for you sharing your knowledge . Desy , a disciple of RU-vids chip producing elders
fabulous, I've often thought that indexing should be CNC even if nothing else in the shop is. You can also teach the controller how much backlash is in your mechanical system and have it add or subtract that figure when it changes direction. I don't believe that would be superior to your approach, just wanted to point out that it's often done that way.
Fantasic job Stephan ! You reminded me that i was going to make an electronic indexer myself - (one long indexing job , in my case a set of change gears for a model lathe , and everyone looks for a better way to do it) Happy New Year .
You made such a neat setup now go make or modify an accurate automated punch press and you will have a very handy money maker that wont beat your quill up.
No need for a punch press. Just a small shaper with a few more solenoids and stepper motors on it. Mount the rotary table vertically on the shaper table and use it to drive the broaching head. Then you have a completely automated setup! :-)
