The romantic tale: mill meets dividing head.

In this episode, we put the dividing head together. Some fancy milling was involved getting the worm shaft support to match with the tilted arm, but it got done. I spring-loaded the sector arms and they work fine. There is a collar that is pressed on to the crank arm, held down with a setscrew..

You will see that I have not cut off the worm shaft yet. No matter, will do that later. The thing to do is now to bolt the thing to the mill and see if it fits. Cecil, meet Ms. Head. Now the question is, does it fit? Is this true love?

 Well, pretty much. There is enough clearance, the plates do not scrape on the table. But as in all romances, there are some rough spots. We can see this in the following picture. I have installed a fly-cutter in the mill to illustrate the problem: the Y-axis travel is insufficient. I could cut the 30-tooth gears with this setup, the diameter is but 30 mm or so. But the bigger gears will give me a problem.  The biggest gear in this clock is 90 mm diameter, if I remember correctly. I cannot move the Y axis back any further. I will have to think about this, so stay tuned for more romantic tales.

But I am quite pleased. I have actually built a dividing head that fits my mill.