Rusty the dividing head

[thehomeengineer]

Hi All
This was a gift from a friend. He bought it on EBay really, cheap as it was in a terrible state of repair. How I ended up with the dividing head, he said it was too big and heavy for his machine and could not be bothered to relist on EBay and just wanted it out of his way.
Therefore, I ended up putting under the bench not knowing what I was going to do with seized up rusty dividing head as I already have a great little Hoffman set up. One day they needed a dividing head a work for some manual machining so out comes Rusty a bit of diesel and gentle persuasive encouragement from a mallet we were in business.
After using the dividing head, I could see the potential it could offer me at home being larger than the Hoffman and the opportunity to fit a D1-4 nosepiece so I could use all the tooling from the lathe 3-Jaw, 4-Jaw, collet chuck etc. So a full strip down clean and a new D1-4 nosepiece manufactured.
The large indexing plate and handle was very cumbersome and the handle was stiff to operate and had evidence that it had been broken in the past and re-soldered up badly.
A few years before getting this dividing head a had purchased a load of indexing plates at an auction which I was going to us on my rotary table (but never got around to it) So after a quick scout around the workshop I found them in an old cardboard box and decided these would be better. So new bushes and hand crank was manufactured and fitted.
The bottom of the dividing head was flat so I machined a groove 5/8” wide 1/8” deep in the bottom parallel to main spindle, drilled, and tapped two holes to accept dogs to fit tee slot for quick alignment.
The photos show the dividing head finished but unfortunately, I do not have any pre-refurbishment photos, but believe me it was a sad looking thing.

Old indexing plate and crank handle


D1-4 nosepiece


New crank handle, bushes and the purchased indexing plate (I have a full set of plates)


back view of dividing head


Homemade square head spanner for locking D1-4 cams


If you have got this far down the page I thank you for taking the time to view and read
The Home Engineer

[DIYer]

Thanks thehomeengineer! We've added your Dividing Head Refurbishing to our Measuring and Marking category,
as well as to your builder page: thehomeengineer's Homemade Tools. Your receipt:

Dividing Head Refurbishing by thehomeengineer

tags: divider