patrickpnw
Plastic
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2017
- Location
- NW Washington State
I have kind of an interesting problem I am trying to solve. My company does repair, overhaul, and manufacture of aircraft propellers and some of the blades are required to be mounted on a lathe for the fillet and shank to be repaired. The blades are abound 125 lbs and 77 inches long so it would be ideal to use some sort of center. The problem is that the blade tip does not rotate on the blade shank axis and all blades are slightly different since they are repaired or overhauled blades.
I am wondering if anyone has any ideas as to how to support the blade tip in a lathe?
Right now we have a piece of L shaped aluminum with about 8 holes drilled at progressive height and the machinist kind of just eyeballs the correct hole to use and uses a C clamp to clamp to the blade. It seems like it works okay but I would like to set up something more repeatable.
I have an idea of making a small vice with slotted mounting holes and UHMW jaws that can pinch the blade tip and be dialed in and bolted down to some sort of live center.
I am not sure how this would work. Any suggestions or pictures of similar situations. I will try to add some pictures to tomorrow.
I am wondering if anyone has any ideas as to how to support the blade tip in a lathe?
Right now we have a piece of L shaped aluminum with about 8 holes drilled at progressive height and the machinist kind of just eyeballs the correct hole to use and uses a C clamp to clamp to the blade. It seems like it works okay but I would like to set up something more repeatable.
I have an idea of making a small vice with slotted mounting holes and UHMW jaws that can pinch the blade tip and be dialed in and bolted down to some sort of live center.
I am not sure how this would work. Any suggestions or pictures of similar situations. I will try to add some pictures to tomorrow.
