Thread: Scraping rotary table

Looks like a quality old one to me. Good on you for giving it a go scraping it in.


Do you know what the round landing on the side is for??

That's a nice old rotary table.

Thanks for the ferrocyanide link, I have an ounce on the way. What mixing ratio are you using?

Looks great so far.

Is your plate big enough to allow you to keep and eye on parallel?*

Is the 0.2-0.3 in the table or the base?

For what its worth I'd say you're going a little to easy in the early passes on the second side....but given its your first go in anger I cant blame you. I know I stuffed about on my first job, was a valuable lesson.

Stuart

*Well of course it is, you can fit the indicator stand in the hole lol

I considered scraping mine some time ago, but I can't figure out how the make the top exactly right angles to the (invisible) axis of the table. Running an indicator around the central hole (with whatever runout that has) seems less than n accurate attempt....
Making the bottom parallel to the top is less of an issue for me.
I'd like to hear what you did Daniel.

Daniel,

Looking good. Thanks for posting your scraping. It's been a while since I have seen those nice blue dots. I kinda miss them!

Hi Joe, WRT scraping flat or perpendicular to the axis, can't you just place an indicator on the RT (as close to edge as you can) and then turn the handle to rotate the table? If you inadvertantly hand scrape the table out of perpendicular to it's axis, it will appear to wobble when rotated on it's axis. Will it not?

I'm sure I'm missing something (or I'm wrong) because you would have thought of that I'm sure.

Simon

I guess a test bar in the socket should show square to the table surface, everything else should be (as Simon suggests) a matter of getting surfaces parallel with each other - if the base is parallel with the table bearing surface and the top is parallel with the table bearing surface then the base is hopefully parallel with the table surface.
(as it is sitting on the desk) Schlesinger does not mention rotary tables by the way, only dividing heads.

Michael

DSEL74-
No not sure what the landing is used for. Hoping someone here might know. it does appear fairly old, and bloody heavy!


Bob Ward-
I mixed 25-30 grams of ferrocyanide to 150 grams of grease, was going to add more but it seems OK at this ratio. The ferrocyanide is a really fine powder/dust- sneeze and it would be everywhere!

Stustoys-
Think its all in the base, measured the complete table and it was 0.2-0.3 out, removed the top measured the base and its still 0.2-0.3 out so thought I would start with that.
The surface plate is 600 x 600mm so its big enough- did exactly what you did -thought afterwards -can just measure from within the hole!!

jhovel-
Hi Joe, was thinking I would do exactly what Michael G suggest.
Finish scraping the base, reassemble table, check to see how far the top is out of parallel with the base and also check to see if the axis(center hole/socket) is square with the base, my thought was to scrap the base of the top until the axis is square and then scrap the top of the table parallel last... does that make sense????
What are your thoughts?

Thanks for the comments and suggestions.
I was actually thinking going about it in a similar way, but starting at the
check the runout of the table axis with a test bar; then shim the base until I get it running true; then try and measure the runout of the top and correct that by scraping or milling, dependent on how far out it is.
Then I was going to scrape the base parallel to the top and repeat from step one....
Not sure about the interface between gearbox and top. Maybe I need to check those two surfaces as well.... ?

G'day Daniel,
Nice work on the scraping.
I reckon your rotary table might be a Thiel. There's a photo of a table that looks very similar to yours on the lathes.co.uk site about half way down this page:

http://www.lathes.co.uk/thiel158/

The photo shows the circular column attached to carry an over arm support allowing work to be mounted on the table between centres.
It might be worth going back to where you got it to see if they have the column and overarm, or any other Thiel accessories for that matter.
Very nice find, I'm jealous .
Cheers,
Greg.

Hi Greg,

Thanks, your right it is a Thiel rotary table, nice to know what that landing was used for!
img18.jpg
Unfortunately there are no other accessories, bought a Deckel FP1 off a semi retired tool maker nearly a year ago, at the time he was still using the table but said later on he would let me know when he was willing to sell, that time was last week. He had the rotary table, a sine plate 4 dial indicators( Mahr) and a few other bits and pieces which I bought.

Originally Posted by danielwaus

... bought a Deckel FP1 off a semi retired tool maker nearly a year ago, at the time he was still using the table but said later on he would let me know when he was willing to sell, that time was last week. He had the rotary table, a sine plate 4 dial indicators( Mahr) and a few other bits and pieces which I bought.

So - where are the pictures?

Michael