Building a Digital Dividing Head

My home built lathe/mill combination makes it relatively easy to add a digital divider head to the setup to mill spur gears.
The main key component is a DC motor with a large gear reduction box. By means of an Arduino, the end shaft rotation can be rotated in precise steps. The vertical mill with a gear cutting tool can then be used to mill the gear teeth. The DC motor, rotary encoder and metal pieces came from the local industrial scrap yard.
You can find the design files like 3D CAD drawings, electrical schematics and Arduino program files on my website page: www.simprojects.nl/lathe_and_m... (bottom of the page)
You may want to watch the previous videos:
Building a Lathe from Industrial Scrap: • Building a lathe from ...
Building a Lathe from Industrial Scrap: • Building a vertical mi...

[@john2478]

Roland Thanks for the help you gave me to get mine working. I followed a different route with a right angle drive wiper motor and the smaller gear ratio did cause me some problems but thankfully now working. Many thanks for giving me the inspiration to build it. John

[@Rolandvanroy]

Hi John, Glad to be of help, good to know your setup is working correctly now. I'll add some of your software parameter modifications into the Arduino software code comments on my website.

[@Renvoxan]

This is ingenious Roland - top quality work on YT!

[@mumblbeebee6546]

Thank you for sharing this Roland - a very clever and neat system, and I love that it is from recycled components! Together with Clough42’s electronic lead screw, bit by bit we can eliminate actual gears from machining now (just joking!) Looking forward to your next design!

[@bone1264]

Real genius in action. Great respect for you sir 👍.

[@sergheigarau514]

More precise than a Swiss watch, congratulations you are legendary 😀👍

[@ferdinandvanderduin1929]

geweldig om te zien en dat geldt ook voor de andere uploads, benieuwd naar de "scrapyard"

Glad to see you back on YT. Keep them projects coming!

[@AccidentalScience]

Nice project and very well made. Vibrations on encoders are common. While you solved the problem by inhibiting the pulse count while cutting, which is a brilliant solution, in the case you need to keep counting the encoder an alternative solution that not involve the edge detection of both channels (wasting one more interrupt) is to look at the B signal both when A is rising and falling. When A is rising look at B to count up or dw and lock the count. When A is falling look at B that must have a complementary level when A was rising: if so unlock the count, otherwise this is a fake pulse and let ignore it. This works also for fake pulses on A. It seems complex but are just six lines of code in C. Greetings.

[@Rolandvanroy]

Thanks a lot for this information, very useful! It should be possible to do this with Arduino, but I need to be careful that the extra code execution time can be finished within the A rising and falling edge. so the rotary encoder maximum RPM needs to be considered. Otherwise use a Teensy I guess.

[@AccidentalScience]

@@Rolandvanroy I've tested this code using C in a Atmega32 and I found the limit is around 10KHz, leaving room for very few other routines in background. Not sure how it would perform with Arduino, I'm not that great expert of that environment.

[@grzegorztarka1500]

Home made lathe mill set. Love it.

[@RolandElliottFirstG]

Very nice, it worked out very accurate.

[@HMaktoum]

Thank you so much for this valuable video. Is very useful information.

[@KHLin]

Nice job done!

[@homemadetools]

Nice build. We shared this video on our homemade tools forum this week 😎

[@Rolandvanroy]

Thanks!

[@Alex-xh1zi]

Great build! I wonder if you could add an actuator to the locking collar and a micro switch on the carriage to increment the tooth count. That way you are only winding the carriage back and forth making it even more automated.

[@karolj]

Very good job!

[@sohanurrahman5859]

Great work

[@doc.hishamehab3037]

Thanks 😊😊 .for fantastic vedio.

[@andrewnapierski7620]

How do you account for gears of different diameters with different tooth styles? This setup makes a lot of sense if you are only ever cutting that particular tooth size on that particular diameter.

[@serdaraytemiz9978]

Happy New Years Roland. I wish I could leave 10 likes!

[@davidmclean5067]

Very nice.

[@AccidentalScience]

How is that you find those industrial scrapyards? I'd really love to find one.

[@shanpoxiao2737]

Roland van Roy先生您好！ 我們都非常非常喜歡您的視頻，是否使用中文為我們解釋，就像您講解電路設計一樣。 非常感謝！ 敬禮！

[@felixrenkl6981]

please more!!!

[@YongeQi]

3D Printer Linear bearings/ Sliding blocks/Shaft Brackets/ Couplings/Handles/ Engraving Machine Press Plates / Manual Screw Jacks/ Lathes Dogs/ Disc Springs/ Screws/ Nuts ...Welcome to MSM Store

[@f2design141]

Wonderfull

[@itarry4]

How hard would it be to turn your set up in to a CNC lathe/cutter etc.... I've very little knowledge on such things but it seems well inside your abilities.

[@thanhviluongngoc5170]

Verygood , I love your working, I hope have you video clip wonderfull more than, I love your did, I watched and I will watch all your video clip, your working very wonderfull, your machine very nice, thank you very much, my English is not good , you didn't smile😃😃😃😃, thank you read my coment.

[@alo1236546]

You need hydrid stepper motor with large torque 8nm

[@srinivastech6653]

Sir. Can we have a schematic of bread board soldering

[@marcellofois6367]

SALVE. Rolandvanroy . Complimenti e grazie per mostrarci i tuoi lavori.. "per noi è oro già colato" . per quanto riguarda la programmazione di arduino non posso fare nessuna domanda ( mi piacerebbe ) perchè non ho mai avuto occasione di " guardare"/ studiare questa tecnologia.. Per precisione, vorrei sapere se il motore che usi è quello di un tergicristalli di un camion.. grazie e buon divertimento.

[@Rolandvanroy]

The motor came from an old pick&place machine. You can still find it online: www.amazon.com/Penta-B14-1007101300034-Motor-T77981/dp/B01BMPKHUE

[@marcellofois6367]

@@Rolandvanroy Grazie per l'interessamento.

[@rito147]

I know you said you sourced a lot from the scrap yard, about how much did you spend on this project?

[@Rolandvanroy]

Including Arduino, LCD, Motor driver and switches and the scrapyard DC motor, encoder and cutting tools around 70 euros.

[@michaelennen3432]

Have you calculated the accuracy of this design? If the 139,000 increments per turn is correct, and the device can rotate accurately with that resolution (i.e. telling the device to go to 129,000th increment goes to 129,000th increment and not the 128,999th nor 129,001th increment) then I think the accuracy is roughly 10 arcseconds (given 360 degrees * 60 arc minutes * 60 arc seconds) = 1,290,000 is roughly one order of magnitude more than your 139,000 increments. 10 arcsecond accuracy is quite accurate indeed. What are the limits of this?

[@Rolandvanroy]

see 10:46: I measured an error of 4 pulses, which is 0.01degrees.

[@jbaezja7]

Can you share the code arduino

[@Rolandvanroy]

Please see the description for code, etc.

[@jbaezja7]

@@Rolandvanroy im very basic in arduino and ineed to know how to make menu in arduino example I push button then the program answer me hit enter etc

[@jbaezja7]

@@Rolandvanroy where can I see in the video ?

[@jbaezja7]

or descripcion

[@Rolandvanroy]

@@jbaezja7 www.simprojects.nl/images/digital_divider_head_final.ino

[@viktormelehov8061]

Дуже цікаве рішення виконання робіт не в кого подібного не бачив

[@jeffover4385]

goed bezig pik.

[@assamite9614]

0:37 teeth do not divide equally in the sample piece. 0:40 Perfectly divided! I stopped watching right at this moment. I smell some kind of scam.