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Thread: Fixing a Chinese rotary table

  1. #1
    Supporting Member tonyfoale's Avatar
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    Fixing a Chinese rotary table

    About six years ago there was a post on this forum describing a repair to a drill press table by bolting on a steel plate,
    Drill Press Table Repair

    Prior to that I used a similar technique to fix and improve a 150 mm rotary table that had been machined badly in the factory.

    The problem can be seen here,
    Fixing a Chinese rotary table-rottabroto2.jpg Fixing a Chinese rotary table-rottabroto1.jpg Click images for full size.

    I guess that the T slots had been machined with a milling cutter that was meant for a larger rotab, or that two passes were made with the correct cutter at different height settings, leaving insufficient thickness to support the force from a clamping bolt and T nut. Here is another rotab for comparison with correctly machined and hence stronger T slots.
    Fixing a Chinese rotary table-rotab038.jpg

    To fix the bad example I firstly machined away the top of the T slots and then took a very light truing cut on a milling machine over the whole table. I then drilled a steel plate to take countersunk screws to fix the plate to the original rotab table. Plain through holes were also drilled in the plate. These aligned with the slots in the table to take the place of the T slots. Rectangular nuts could then take the place of the stock T nuts. I used three radially disposed holes over each table slot rather than mill slots in the plate to retain strength. Had I milled slots I would have ended up with four cake slice pieces which would have been weaker and more prone to distortion and they would have needed more fixing screws. I made the plate 170 mm diameter in place of the original 150 mm and that has proved to be useful on several occasions. To finish off I took a truing cut over the steel plate

    The second photo shows the stock slots with the offending weak parts removed.
    Fixing a Chinese rotary table-dsc_6137.jpg Fixing a Chinese rotary table-dsc_6138.jpg

    Download plans for rotary tables.


  2. The Following 4 Users Say Thank You to tonyfoale For This Useful Post:

    Moby Duck (Dec 19, 2024), mr mikey (Dec 18, 2024), mwmkravchenko (Dec 18, 2024), thevillageinn (Dec 20, 2024)

  3. #2
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    Thanks tonyfoale! We've added your Rotary Table Fix to our Machining category,
    as well as to your builder page: tonyfoale's Homemade Tools. Your receipt:




    Download plans for rotary tables.

    New plans added on 01/15/2025: Click here for 2,702 plans for homemade tools.

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