After years of trying I bought a vertical mill with a ton of tooling for only 2K right here in town. Have it set and running in it's permanent spot.Want to build an indexing fixture to mill V slots and ring billits. Tooling includes an indexing head but no tailstock fixture. What is a good base design to mountthe indexer and tailstock so it can be set on and rotated on the mills table? Anylead or threads on building this project would be greatly used by this 85 year old semi retired engineer.Thanks for any info you care to share.
mill fixture build
- Thread starter ken ken quarter
- Start date
I have seen the jigs done several ways, from use of a indexer & tail stock to using 2 indexers. Mounting may depend on your milling table, but I've seen that made from T-slot extrusion, or just plain old thick aluminum plate which should be no problem to make on your mill. The main thing is you need some way to offset for when Your cutting v-grooves, either through a tail stock, the mounting position Itself, or you can make a slot in your mounting plate to allow for a pivot and offset that way. There seems to be varying opinions on what works best, and you'll probably receive such in response here, but for now You can do a search in this forum using the keyword "Milling" in the search box, and that should bring up some jigs, as well as previous discussions on them.
Greg
Greg
My congratulations on being a 85 year old semi-retired Engineer from a 78 year old retired from IBM Chemical Engineer. Isn't getting old grand?
Here is the one I got from Lee. There is an indexer and tail stock on EBay as a set for $68. The tail stock is different than the one in the pic. I could be wrong but I think the tail stock on this is a gooder one.
You can see that there is a T nut on the cylinder that fits in the brass bushing and a slot milled into the other side that will allow the fixture to be adjusted and locked. I bought this on a whim that I might someday get a mill. Much more to buy first but someday it will happen. Got a pretty fair shake on this so it doesn't hurt if it hangs around the shop for a while.
You can see that there is a T nut on the cylinder that fits in the brass bushing and a slot milled into the other side that will allow the fixture to be adjusted and locked. I bought this on a whim that I might someday get a mill. Much more to buy first but someday it will happen. Got a pretty fair shake on this so it doesn't hurt if it hangs around the shop for a while.
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