Help with building an indexing table.

swamp dweller · Jun 19, 2013

I'm looking for advice/help to build an indexing table to assemble small parts. Not a rotary table to be used on a mill but a table that will index 45 or 90 degrees so that a fixture mounted on the table would move around and be positioned under an air cylinder to press 2 parts together that are loaded in the fixture. We are currently doing this manually with a small arbor press but would like to make this a little easier on the operator as well as speed up the process a little. I know I wouldn't want to do it this way all day long.

We have a full shop (we build molds), just no experience in this area.
Any help / advice will be greatly appreciated.

APD · Jun 19, 2013

without knowing all the details, this could be made quickly on a vertical mill:

start with two plates

Lower plate has a pin sticking out of the center, upper plate has a hole to accept the pin.

Lower plate also has a spring loaded detent ball. Underside of upper plate has small divots every 45 degrees.

Mount your fixture to upper plate.

there are a million other ways to do it, but it all depends on your design constraints of what you need it to accomplish.

blake in spokane · Jun 19, 2013

Over the years I made a small index centers with the change gears from an Atlas lathe. And a 5" quick spacer useing a sprocket, both having a spring loaded pin. Both gears & sprockets are ready available.

JimGlass · Jun 20, 2013

Would a CNC indexer work? I made the one shown in the link but you may need one with a larger table. It can be programmed for as many
indexes as you would want. Any speed you want. Acceleration and deceleration, what ever you need.

CNC indexer

Jim

mfgbydesign · Jun 20, 2013

Maybe a reloading turret press?

DDoug · Jun 20, 2013

Camco make's just what you need.
CAMCO-FERGUSON / Industrial Motion Control | Solutions in Motion

You buy the proper gearbox from them, you put your table on top.

No need to re-invent the wheel, it's been done before (many, many times)

Or there's used:
http://www.mckeanmachinery.com/inventory/search.php?keyword=index&category=&item=&x=0&y=0

Down near the bottom of the page, they are under a grand.

Robert Campbell Jr. · Jun 20, 2013

For decades that job has been traditionally been done with Geneva Indexing drives such as this: Animating Geneva Mechanism in SolidWorks | Boxer's CAD CAM Blog
And many variations here: http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/k/kmoddl/pdf/002_010.pdf

The driving shaft is easily fitted with a cam to activate a pnumatic cylinder to do the press work during the long (depending on driven speed) 'dwell' period between indexes.

That leaves the operator free to load and unload the part slots and even time to make some quality assurance checks, again, depending on the speed that the indexer is cycled.

In the late fifties I was employed tapping innumerable threaded aircraft fittings, nuts, couplings etc. with Geneva drives.

Gotta' be a few still around and not impossible to make with a rotary table on a vertical mill. My boss made at least some of ours.

Bob

CalG · Jun 20, 2013

Motorized indexing? Or just positioning?

Is an operator going to attend the loading and unloading of parts? Are two parts being fed at once to the pressing position?

Automation? or only fixture? A rotary table with an indexing plate can do a lot. Add a stepper motor and programable drive (Like a Parker SX) and you can have simple continuous indexing automation.

Or, just spin the table by hand. Drilling a rotory table top to tap for threads is easy enough. Import tables are throw aways.

But, the size of your parts, and the number of stations, along with the degree of automation have large influences on your best bet.

Robert Campbell Jr. · Jun 20, 2013

Here's an eight position pneumatic indexer with a 16" diameter table for $299 buy it now: Jackson Machine Products T 8 8 CWS Harmonic Indexing Rotary Drive 8 POS | eBay

Bob

BobRenz · Jun 20, 2013

You are talking about a Geneva indexer. There used to be a book titled something like "Ingenious Mechanisms for Designers". Do an Amazon search for a title like this, and I'll bet there are some modern versions of this that are available.

Regardless, a Geneva mechanism can be set up to handle as many stations as desired, and at whatever throughput you want. If you use a variable speed drive (maybe like a Zero-Max), you'd be in pretty good shape if your process changed and got either slower, or faster.

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