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Deckel Universal table users- Do you tend to tilt front to back or side to side ?

Milacron

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Suspect the answer is you "tend" to do neither ! But if you need to tilt, how many of you tilt one way more often than the other ? Or, about the same either way (or sometimes both together for that especially strange part) ?

Reason I ask is I recently bought a 6 axis DRO and it occurred to me it would be cool to utilize the "excess" two axis by connecting used or NOS Heidenhain sine wave type (i.e. not the more common TTL) rotary angle encoders to the tilting pivot points of the universal table.

(keeping in mind the table top rotation already has an integral encoder)

Rotary encoders that would work could be bought as cheap as 150 bucks each on eBay. The front to back tilt would at least appear to be a piece of cake to mount an angle encoder on... But the side to side....that would require some major surgery to do...might even be so much surgery as to be impossible from a practical standpoint. The encoder would either have to be very small and thin...or have a very small/thin pulley for timing belt to rotary encoder mounted somewhere else under the table...but lots of stuff in the way there as well.

Another idea would be a precision digital level output (assuming the mill is kept precisely level at all times) but there doesn't seem to exist one from Heidenhain.

My take on it at present is to just mount a rotary angle encoder on the front to back tilt pivot point and forget the 6th axis. I emailed Singer yesterday to see if they had heard of anyone ever digitizing all 3 axis of a universal table but yet to hear back.

And yes I realize it's all a bit silly but I enjoy doing strange but desirable machine related things...like installing a color LCD monitor on a 1986 Maho CNC mill.
 
I almost never tilt the table side to side unless i have to.....Resetting the table flat to the "X" axis is a genuine pain....owing to the droop of the table forward when the clamps are loosened....
Its one of those...make a small change then tighten the clamps and read the indicator....note the error , loosen then move to correct, tighten and read the indicator...
Hard to imagine an angle encoder being less subject to these effects either.....

The forward/back tilt that is another matter....move mine all the time, and i am pretty good at interpolating the error of the indicator so things will be correct on tightening....
Think angle readouts on the two tilt axis are a none starter in my book...setting angles for milling i would pretty much always use direct gauging on the part...and returning to tram...well think i covered that above.

For my money i would much rather have the extra two axis moves to read the travel of both quills.....

Cheers Ross
 
I almost never tilt the table side to side unless i have to.....Resetting the table flat to the "X" axis is a genuine pain....owing to the droop of the table forward when the clamps are loosened....
Its one of those...make a small change then tighten the clamps and read the indicator....note the error , loosen then move to correct, tighten and read the indicator...
Hard to imagine an angle encoder being less subject to these effects either.....

The forward/back tilt that is another matter....move mine all the time, and i am pretty good at interpolating the error of the indicator so things will be correct on tightening....
Think angle readouts on the two tilt axis are a none starter in my book...setting angles for milling i would pretty much always use direct gauging on the part...and returning to tram...well think i covered that above.

For my money i would much rather have the extra two axis moves to read the travel of both quills.....
LOL... I suspected you'd be the only one to answer this as you are probably the only one here actually using your universal table to it's advantages !

Know exactly what you mean about re tram and bolt tightening but after some practice I've gotten pretty good at it. In other words at certain clamp bolt tightness levels I know the indicator will read .001 low, so tighten almost all the way, see what happens and move the table some more if necessary while the clamp bolts are almost tight, and then tighten all the way.

A digital angle encoder would of course be effected by the same issues when re tramming, but do you see no use (compared to the rotary table) in digital readout of the table angle front to back ? Seems like it would be so accurate your direct gauging* of the part would not be necessary.

Of course the ultimate accuracy would still be effected by the bolt tightening at the required angle as well, but then even that would seem easier to do looking at a DRO screen than gauging

And yes, agree, side to side re tram is more tedious due to table droop with clamp bolts loose.


=============================

*An example of how you are typically doing that part gauging would be interesting
 
I steal pretty much every idea I can from Ross and my experience with the 2038 table is pretty much exactly what he described. I do find the forward/back tilt adjustment pretty easy and trouble free. I use my universal table a couple times a week, though for a lot of what I do, the NCT500 is more productive. It is a lot faster and easier to set an angle (or multiple angles), lock the table, do a job. then get back to zero--all with a push of a few buttons.

Something to consider with dual digital angle encoders, how are you going to compensate for compound angles? Pretty sure there is no software in any DRO that calculates the change in angle when running compound vs simple angles.

I like the idea of the DRO on the table tilt/pivot (use the rotary digital readout every day), what would really be useful is hydraulic locking of the table rotation ala NCT500 and/or tilt/pivot...
.
 
I like the idea of the DRO on the table tilt/pivot (use the rotary digital readout every day), what would really be useful is hydraulic locking of the table rotation ala NCT500 and/or tilt/pivot...
.
Good to see so far folks tend more toward front to back table tilting as adding a rotary encoder for that is a definite possibility. Re hydraulic locking, that's what Maho did on their rotary tables (really, spring lock and hydraulic unlock) but presume the tilting on their more manual universal tables was conventional bolts.
 
Thiel - not a Deckel table, but exactly the same principles. I use front back tilt/side to side tilt about 80/20. These tables have an auxilliary slide which is surprisingly handy even though its travel is quite short. Unfortunately you can't use the whole travel and steep angular tilting at the same time; you have to back the table off a bit to get clearance.

I also doubt that the extra axes on the DRO would be directly useful for compound angles but you might be able to get a serial output from the DRO that would allow you to do the calculations on a laptop or similar. If you have a Positip 880, I believe that the serial interface can be used in this way to extract coordinates from all axes, but I don't have one and haven't tried this. It might be useful, but I can't think of anything I am likely to do that would justify the effort. Somebody like Ross who does those wonderful complicated setups might. The engine parts I work on are about a century older and usually very simple geometry.
 
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I have a Hermle universal table on my Deckel FP2. It has two great features the Deckel table doesn't have I believe.

The first of which is you can pop the t slot table off by removing a couple of bolts and there is 40 taper holder underneath complete with gear driven pull stud.

The other feature which is more relevant to your question is there are dial indicator holders on the side to side and front to back tilt axes. When mounted the indicator acts on machined peaks in each allowing you to return exactly, within a couple of 10ths to flat. Consequently I used the side to side rotate a bit more. Although, you still have to account for the table droop when you loosen the bolts but it tends to be very repeatable for me now, 20 thou past flat, tighten up and end up at zero.
 
The table removal with 40 taper under is one feature the Deckel table does not have, what is the second?
Deckel table has the indicators on the 3 axis of table movement and they work just as you describe...

I like the taper idea,but wonder at the loss of table rigidity by having a small connection, or am i not seeing this correctly...Can you post a picture opf
your table with and without the table....
Cheers Ross
 
The table removal with 40 taper under is one feature the Deckel table does not have, what is the second?
Deckel table has the indicators on the 3 axis of table movement and they work just as you describe...

I like the taper idea,but wonder at the loss of table rigidity by having a small connection, or am i not seeing this correctly...Can you post a picture opf
your table with and without the table....
Cheers Ross

Hi Ross,

Didn't realize the Seckel had the indicator positions also. I will post picture tomorrow of universal table with and without t slot table.

Best, John
 
Was that table off a mill that came out of Siemens originally that was sold to a canadian?
Dunno, I bought the mill from a guy in NC who was diagnosed with lung cancer (from ad on Craigs List) and therefore downsizing..., who bought it from another guy in Charlotte, NC who bought it for resale. Where the Charlotte guy got it I have no clue.

I knew about the mill back when the Charlotte guy had it but he wanted too much for it back then and it was not under power so a risky buy. By the time the second guy bought it the price had come down and it was under power to test.

The mill was a little strange in that some previous owner had replaced the original DC axis motor and DC drive with domestic units...but they worked ok.

Seems like I might have sold the mill to a Canadian, in which case maybe it went back "home" ....sans the universal table. (I think I put a Deckel FP2 angular table on it)
 
That describes the mill I bought with the interesting DC drive setup and FP2 table. Didn't realize that it had a universal table at one point.
Seems like it came to light that since the Hermle used the same mount spacing as Deckel, the two separate (mill and universal table) were worth more than the two together....and since I happened to have an excess perfect fit FP2 table at the time I made the switch. Seems like the mill had a decent DRO with it as well.
 
Hi Don,

Yep, that is the one. Have been putting it to good used ever since.

Thought I would get out to the shop and be able to get to the next step in my project where I would pull the table off and take a couple of pictures with a collet installed. Hopefully tomorrow

JP
 
Here is the Hermle table on my Fp2 in its usual state:

IMG_0859-M.jpg


In order to pull the table you remove the 2 cap screws in the center and the nut from the locking bolt on the periphery. I have some little jacking bars that slip into the t slots to make this task a little easier.

As you can see from the photo the bottom of the table has a center built in which is removable although I never have.

IMG_0863-M.jpg


With the table removed you have access to the 40 taper tool holder. As you can see from the photo the table rides on the inner scraped annulus. This provides a broad bearing surface for the table so it is quite stiff.

In the photo below you can see the taper and I also pulled the cover from this funky mechanism used to remove any radial play from the rotation.

IMG_0865-M.jpg


There is a wedge which is pushed in by the thumb screw at 6 o'clock in the photo below. Tightening this screw will will close up the rollers up to the point where the table will not rotate. I have not seen something like this before but seems like a clever solution.

IMG_0866-M.jpg


Overall I find the whole configuration of the table very handy. Getting the dial table on and off is about a 5 minute operation now. I make a lot of part where I like to radius the nose with a nice surface finish. I find setting the parts up using collets with various holders goes very quickly.

IMG_0864-S.jpg


My next big project is restore the table. As you can see from the photos someone had used water based coolant somewhere in the tables past and it made a mess of things inside. I have it in good serviceable order now but I would really like to get it cleaned up. However, I use the tilting and rotating almost all the time so I keep pushing the date for restoration. Maybe when I retire in another decade or so.
 
In the photo below you can see the taper and I also pulled the cover from this funky mechanism used to remove any radial play from the rotation.
IMG_0865-M.jpg

As you know, I've also gotten one of these tables and am still figuring it out. I wanted to ask about the orientation of your table relative to the SK40 nose. In the photo above, you can see the corroded stain from the clamping slot. On my machine, there are two stains, because the table was locked in both possible orientations. I'm trying to figure out which was the intended location when the table was made. I can see that your table was locked on the drive tab which is NOT marked with a "1". Do you know if that's correct? My taper also has one drive tab marked with a "1" and I was thinking that this was the correct location for the clamping slot.

EDIT: After some cleaning I found matching number "1" on both parts!
 
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