Need affordable 36-position vertical indexer suggestions

Long Tom · Jul 18, 2017

Howdy folks! It's been a while. I've been busy making chips and I hope you have too.

I've been making rear electric bike hubs for a customer that have spoke flanges with 18 holes for spokes. My indexers are Hardinge copies with 24 holes, so since the quantity of these hubs has been small I've done them on my rotary table. They are taking off for him and I need to get faster at making them, so, time for a new indexer!

Requirements are it needs to be 5c, to be able to be set up vertically, and ideally not break the bank. Since the hubs are kinda long it's important that the indexer not be TOO tall mounted in the Z axis or I'll run out of Z room on my mill..... so it'd be great if it was under 11" tall, which is what my setup now comes out to.

Any suggestions? THANKS!!

Milland · Jul 18, 2017

If these are being turned out with a decent margin in the pricing, might be worth making a planetary drill head with all 18 drills in place for single-shot drilling. What's the pitch diameter, about 2.5"? Need some space to get reasonable gears and bearing that'll last a while.

Another option is to build your own indexer with a spring detent plate and a kick cylinder. No extreme accuracy needed, simple and "easy" to make.

johnoder · Jul 18, 2017

56 tooth gear employed for this 14 division job. Two shot pins - at an angle to each other - give the pair of superimposed but offset patterns

Thumb nut foreground is part of clamp to apply a little shove to one shot pin

L Vanice · Jul 18, 2017

Hardinge makes blank indexing discs for their indexers. They probably cost a bundle, but I have seen a couple on eBay. You drill whatever number of holes you want. Hardinge will also sell them drilled with less than 24 holes and ready to use, with 20 being the one usually found.

Anyway, you have a clone, so the real Hardinge part may not work. It is a simple part to make if you just drill the 18 holes, skip the tapping for the blanking screws, skip the tapped holes for the blanking screw retainer, skip the index marks and numbers and don't heat treat it.

You have to be careful to orient the spindle so the key clears the housing bore when taking it apart.

Larry

stephen thomas · Jul 18, 2017

Yep, if you already have that fixture and it is tooled for the job, just do what Larry said and make your own 18 space plate.

Alternately, Hardinge 5c DH's are 4:1, so fast to index, but you would still have to chase the sector arms around a either a custom 9 hole master, or a 18, 27, 36, 45, or 72 hole plate.

smt

DDoug · Jul 18, 2017

IIRC there is a semi production indexer using custom spacing plates and an air cylinder.

michiganbuck · Jul 18, 2017

[Need affordable 36-position vertical indexer suggestions]
The bargain basement is a 36 tooth gear..and a snap finger...
Index 1-2-3-4-9-12-18 and 36.

Stock Metal Spur Gear (1 Module - 36 Tooth) Gears Jsumo | JSumo.com

Yes one could lathe turn a stub and set it with the part in a common V block. Very likely inside .0005 or better. Center or spot drill...

Memran · Jul 19, 2017

Have you considered one of those Stevensen's Spin Indexers? They take a 5C collet, and are graduated to 360 degrees, so very easy to get your 36. They're not made for vertical mounting, but you could potentially mount it to an angle plate. It might be too tall.

Just mentioning this because it definitely won't break the bank

Chip Chester · Jul 19, 2017

Making your own index plate will be cost-effective and good practice for when you need to re-make it for Hub 2.0 with 22 spokes/side. Customer will balk at 24/side, just because you can already do that...

Chip

dgfoster · Jul 19, 2017

Not sure what your budget may be. Obviously cutting a custom plate for the indexer you already own is the cheapest and simplest solution. Using the manual indexer could become tiresome on a run of 30 hubs, though. And as someone pointed out, the thirtysix-hole plate does not solve the problem when the new and improved 22-hole hub is unveiled.

A stepper controller added to a rotab with a 5C block semi-permanently afixed would be the direction I would be thinking about. Here is a source for the motors and controllers that would be slick for this application. The nice thing is, besides being of very low height profile, it solves the current problem as well as all future dividing problems Indexing hole-to-hole at a touch of a button and way more precision than the current job requires. Don't scoff at the model engineers title. These units are proven, quick, durable, and convenient.

DivisionMaster - Home

And here is brief video of the device in action. Rotary Table indexer/ Division controller - YouTube

Denis

Long Tom · Jul 19, 2017

THANKS for the ideas!

I have (2) of the Hardinge copies. One is nice, the other is a POS (a couple of the pin-holes are loose fitting). I'm gonna take apart the POS and make an 18-position plate for it.

Guess since it's holding a mandrel vertically I should first verify that the 5c taper is ground true and not pointing cockeyed.

Zahnrad Kopf · Jul 19, 2017

L Vanice said:
Hardinge makes blank indexing discs for their indexers. They probably cost a bundle, but I have seen a couple on eBay. You drill whatever number of holes you want. Hardinge will also sell them drilled with less than 24 holes and ready to use, with 20 being the one usually found.

Anyway, you have a clone, so the real Hardinge part may not work. It is a simple part to make if you just drill the 18 holes, skip the tapping for the blanking screws, skip the tapped holes for the blanking screw retainer, skip the index marks and numbers and don't heat treat it.

You have to be careful to orient the spindle so the key clears the housing bore when taking it apart.

Larry

+1 ! This, up there.

Larry was very helpful when I ran into a similar situation a few years back. I sacrificed a Hardinge specimen for use in our WEDM and made some masking plates for specific hole counts to accomplish the job at hand. As Larry points out, being a copy Hardinge plates may or may not actually work in yours. However, they really are very simple affairs so don't sweat it much and just make some.

If you take yours apart and measure the plate, one of us can verify whether or not it matches a Hardinge one. I have several plates to compare against.

Good luck.

michiganbuck · Jul 19, 2017

Hardinge copies.. check to see how hard..you may be able to better the poor one with a reamer and then use for another application..

I like to OD notch an index so to use a finger to it for faster indexing for certain work.

Illinoyance · Jul 19, 2017

Kalamazoo makes a small 5C indexer. It is normally furnished with a 24 space index plate but they will make custom plates.

Long Tom · Jul 28, 2017

Thanks for all the great advice (as usual) guys!

I took apart the funky indexer and made an 18-hole plate for it. Got it back together yesterday; seems to be working fine but have not tested it for real yet. An interesting mix of nice tight machine work and utter crap (such as the really soft screws I had to drill out).

About to start a different job on some AL castings so it will be a few days before I can test the thing for real.

Thanks again!!! Can't say enough how much I appreciate this forum and the folks who make it what it is. Salute!

dgfoster · Jul 28, 2017

Not sure how generally applicable this observation is but: I have a clone ( Phase II) indexer which seemed to consistently resist indexing during a certain part of its rotation. If I loosened the nut that cinched up the spindle of the indexer, the stiffness resolved. But I did not like the slight looseness (lack of preload if you will) in the spindle. I did not understand the source of the troiuble and put up with it for a while. Finally, in frustration, I took it completely apart and started measuring runout in everything and found out that the thrust washer surfaces were not exactly parallel. The high vs low was about 4 or 5 tenths different.

After a quick trip to the surface grinder (could have also lapped it on a diamond stone or si-carbide paper) to get the surfaces parallel made it sweet as could be. As you say, overall the quality of machining and grinding was excellent. I suspect the operator failed to stone off a boogy on his machine the day he made that part and so caused the inaccuracy. FWIW.

Denis

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