Swopping a Spindexer Spindle End for End. Practical or not?

[Clive FosterParticipant @clivefoster55965]

[Clive FosterParticipant @clivefoster55965]

The inexpensive 5C spindexers are, in general, very useful little beasts but the angle setting disk gets in the way when doing small work. Long series cutters and/or creative workholding being the order of the day.

The problem would be considerably reduced if the device could be assembled with the workholding taper at the opposite end to the angle setting disk. In principle it looks to be possible but I wondered if anyone had actually tried before I start investigating.

Clive

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

It has been done before.

Not certain if it was this site but almost sure it was over on the HSM forum.

[Clive FosterParticipant @clivefoster55965]

Thanks John. I'll go searching. Been working my way around the problem for over 20 years so its time to stop muttering and do summat. Like so many irritants its not been bad enough to stop mid job to sort and when the job in question is over there's always been something more important.

As an aside I've always felt the spindexer chassis would be a fine basis for enhancement kits to give it low number direct division 4, 6, 8, 12 seem useful to me and to make a basic dividing head in similar style to Senior, the VDH and low end versions from some other breeds such as Elliot.

Clive

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

I converted one many moons ago when I was helping Tony Jeffree with the Divisionmaster.

Not bad for a bodge job ?

[chris stephensParticipant @chrisstephens63393]

Hi Clive,

Tom Lipton over on youtube did a series on doing just that conversion, check his channel "oxtoolco". the series starts at "spin indexer 1"

chriStephens

[chris stephensParticipant @chrisstephens63393]

Correction to above "spindexer indexer 1"

[Clive FosterParticipant @clivefoster55965]

John, Chris.

Thanks very much for the information. Not quite as easy as I'd hoped but no ureasonable difficulties. $64,000 question now is whether to keep the standard disk or replace with a worm wheel and do my proposed Senior / VDH style dividng head modification using the Vertex rotary table dividing disk and accessory set I have in stock. That particular project went on hold way back when workshop enlargement let me swop my Chester Lux stye mill for a Bridgeport so I had room for a proper dividing head, Edgewick "Cincinnatti clone" in my case. Superb but mamma mia it's well heavy! A modded spindexer would be more handleable for jobs within its capability.

I considered fitting an alignment key in a rather similar manner to John but as a "need it now, right now" temporary fix simply milled the edges of the base parallel to the spindle. Like most temporary expedients of adequate performance its become permanent. For ordinary work pressing the machined side up against a parallel in the Tee slot when clamping gets things close, order of a thou + per inch taper. Precision and longer jobs need indicator alignment anyway so the key just gets in the way. As with many older machines my Tee slots aren't that wonderful so a practical key is unlikely to do much better.

Other thing that needs sorting properly is decent spindle clamp. That alloy screw on top works I suppose but doesn't inspire confidence. Proper lever operated screw up two collar clamp running in a cross wise bore underneath the spindle looks the way to go.

Clive

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Is it just me or is there a big blank in the middle of JS post above. edit – it appeared after a while.

For adding a worm see this on HSM

Edited By Bazyle on 12/07/2014 15:05:25

[Clive FosterParticipant @clivefoster55965]

Bazyle

Good link. Thats a really nice job.

Never occurred to me that there would be room to inset a wormwheel into the body. My idea was for a larger wormwheel used externally, VDH style, drilled and marked to replace the standard disk. Obvious disadvantage there is that the worm shaft and dividing disk assembly needs to be completely removed before a direct dividing session. VDH users seem to get along just fine like that tho and proper dividng with the disks is a high days and holidays thing for me anyway.

Clive

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