Elliott 10M Shaper Gear Cutting Fixture Part 1

An in-depth description of the involute gear cutting attachment that I made for my Elliott 10M shaper

[@RB-yq7qv]

A wonderful solution for a machine that many have parted from their shops. There is something about these machines that sets them apart and one is drawn into their rocking motion producing the joys of engineering The hours of work developing this drive and gears needed for cutting wow. I must thank you for taking the time in it's build requirements and operation

[@MatthewTinker-au-pont-blanc]

Very nice! Looking forward to the next episode!

[@ThePottingShedWorkshop]

Thanks for watching. Hopefully the next video will be out next week.

[@Jan_Raap]

Great stuff! Now for your next trick, can you build the same setup for my Invicta 4M? :)

[@ThePottingShedWorkshop]

It took me 3 months to build this from initial design to completion. It might be cheaper for you to buy the involute cutters at £25 a go!😆

[@mosfet500]

Robert, thanks for the interesting video! Just wondering why you didn't use a cogged belt to the dividing head with an idler wheel?

[@ThePottingShedWorkshop]

Aah, the joys of engineering. One problem, so many solutions! I dare say cogged belts, flexible drives (as in a speedo cable) would all work. I had a set of gears, so I used what came to hand. As it was, this took me about about 3 months to complete.

[@rgmveraart]

Dear Sir, Ingeniously made! Regards from an Alba 1A shaper owner in the Netherlands. Ronald Veraart

[@ThePottingShedWorkshop]

Thank you!

[@ronkennedy213]

Wicked clever

[@ThePottingShedWorkshop]

@@ronkennedy213 Thank you. I can't take all the credit. All I did was to improve upon the "wire round a disc" technique that others have used to cut gears on a shaper!

[@ronkennedy213]

@@ThePottingShedWorkshop I beg to disagree. I stand by my statement, wicked clever.

[@Rustinox]

That's a nice setup. Maybe a bit complicated but still, very clever. I just found your channel, so now you have one sub more.

[@ThePottingShedWorkshop]

Thanks for subscribing! I've been watching your channel for a while, so I know how fond you are of your shaper. I'm just trying to find good uses for mine for things that are difficult or expensive to do another way!

[@bulletproofpepper2]

That sir is absolutely magnificent! Well done. Thanks so much for taking the time to share. Beautiful craftsmanship.

[@ThePottingShedWorkshop]

Thanks for watching!

[@robertqueberg4612]

Hello, This series about gear cutting on the shaper was fantastic. In 1966, when I started to work in the U.S., cutting gears was going out of fashion, except for special cases. Shapers were also being replaced with milling machines, and carbide. After a couple years, I started building stamping dies, and later plastic molds. Seeing the program of gear cutting, and the gearing and attachments used, on your beautiful shaper had me watching intently. The quality of your craftsmanship has impressed me highly. Lots of ingenuity, close tolerences, and good finishes show that you are a top class worker. Thank you again.

[@ThePottingShedWorkshop]

Thank you very much. I made these videos to put the ideas I'd tried out there to give others a leg up. My obsession with good finishes I can trace back to my woodturning days, and the good fits are probably a result of me being slightly OCD!

[@bostedtap8399]

Lovely engineering at its best, certainly "Built not Bought", works brilliantly. During my apprenticeship I worked on a shaper for nearly a year on production jobs, 18" Churchill comes to mind?. One regular set of parts to machine were some hardenable stainless steel circular discs, and bevelled hubs that when assembled formed a pulley Vee with serataions to bite onto and drive a copper alloy seam welding wheel, circ 200 to 400 mm diameter. My job was to set up what I think was a purpose built dividing head, with a mounting spindle for the individual parts to be machined, and connecting the shaper ram directly to a ratchet and pawl arm to index the head. This 1978/79, so excuse me some of the details are wrong! Stainless steel was needed due to the strong magnetic flux developed by the very large AC welding currents required for resistance welding. Thanks again for sharing. Regards John from the Black Country.

[@ThePottingShedWorkshop]

Thanks very much! I could have bought a dresser, there was one on ebay 40 miles away for £50 which had a littlle damage, but it would have been too big for my little grinder and I'd have had to find somewhere to store it in my workshop, and space is at a premium!

[@РевольВер-ц3ъ]

Супер!

[@billgilbride7972]

The power of the shaper is underrated in terms of capabilities. You have clearly shown that along with your skill of bringing that power to the forefront using only a sketchy info page and your knowledge of how things work. Thanks for showing us how it's done!

[@ThePottingShedWorkshop]

Thank you very much!

[@johnmoultrie-dc4cj]

Hi Robert thanks for the video I have a Elliot M10 shaper but no experiance of using it so any tips amd tricks greatly accepted thanks John

[@ThePottingShedWorkshop]

Thats where I was after I'd rebuilt mine. Get to know your machine, cut some flat surfaces, try different tool shapes. A shear tool works well for finishing. Have a look at Rustinox's earlier videos on the shaper. There's no short cut to first hand experience, so invest some time!

[@andli461]

Simply amazing! Now I have to watch your other videos. 😊

[@ThePottingShedWorkshop]

Thank you. I hope they're not too dry. I'm still learning how to improve them.

[@samrodian919]

Is this unit your own design sir, or a copy to your specs and made by you? Either way it's an ingenious idea and excellent realisation!

[@ThePottingShedWorkshop]

I'd watched videos where others had used the wire wrapped around a pitch circle diameter disc technique and figured out I could do better. This is the result, I'm proud to say all my own creation. Improving on what others have done. Without the videos, I would probably not have come up with this improvement.

[@rc166honda]

Wonderful machine, beautiful work. More please😁

[@ThePottingShedWorkshop]

Thanks! There are more videos to come!

[@MyLilMule]

Absolutely brilliant engineering! Well done!

[@ThePottingShedWorkshop]

Thank you very much!

[@michaeltelemachus5112]

Very interesting. What are the minimum graduations markings on your tool feed slide?

[@ThePottingShedWorkshop]

@@michaeltelemachus5112 Its graduated in 1/1000 inch. Lots of backlash and not that smooth!

[@michaeltelemachus5112]

@@ThePottingShedWorkshop Thanks. I suppose the backlash is not a great issue in this application. Can you tell me what the spindle thread form and pitch are?

[@ThePottingShedWorkshop]

@@michaeltelemachus5112 It's ACME, 8 TPI giving 125 thou per rotation feed. The fable feed screw is the same.

[@michaeltelemachus5112]

@@ThePottingShedWorkshop Thank again Keep up the good work. I may do one of your fixtures in due course.

[@haroldpearson6025]

I have a 10M, a rare one with a vertical drive. Powerful and very accurate. There are people who believe a shaper is only good for roughing out!

[@mikebryan544]

Impressive build there, how many hours in all that?

[@ThePottingShedWorkshop]

Goodness only knows! It took about 3 months to get it to work to cut spur gears. Add on to the workshop time the time spent doing some preliminary design in 3D design software (Designspark, free download from rswww.com) and writing the spreadsheet to run it and it prob comes out to 150 hours minimum. But I didnt keep a tally, so thats just a guess.

[@mikebryan544]

Yeah i need to get on the software design stuff all the really good stuff is driven by that. I think the mind alone only works on so many levels. Subbed anyway will follow along. Inspiration for me as i’ve a Boxford 8” shaper myself and love all shaper vids

[@howardosborne8647]

this is going to be very interesting. Look forward to the next video.

[@ThePottingShedWorkshop]

Thanks! The second part turned out too long for one video so I've split it into two parts.

[@billdoodson4232]

I wouldn't call 11/14*4 a crude approximation of Pi. Being only .0013 away is spot on for this. I'd love to see the drawings.

[@ThePottingShedWorkshop]

I was thinking more along the lines that they've calculated pi to 62.8 trillion places and my approximation runs out after 4 digits! 😂 I have some drawings in designspark but theyre not dimensioned up. They were more to test ideas, but I'm happy to share them.

[@redmorphius]

Awesome! I have never seen anyone explain this set up on a shaper! Subscribed now

[@stevew6188]

G'day Robert, one hundred and fifty five subscribers so far eh? Add one more to count me in if I may. Two videos at present and looking forward to many more. Cheers.

[@ThePottingShedWorkshop]

Thanks for subscribing! I thought it might be interesting to somebody to see another way of achieving this on a shaper.

[@alansmith5690]

Excellent!

[@ThePottingShedWorkshop]

Thanks!

[@andrewfirman5437]

Ingenious idea and very well executed! I have a 10M and am wondering whether yours is fitted with a 6 pole motor? Looking forward to next episode.

[@ThePottingShedWorkshop]

Thanks! Unfortunately there's no data plate on the motor but I think it's the original fitted to this machine. I have reconfigured the windings from star to delta to run on a 220V inverter, but otherwise the drive train is original.

[@howardosborne8647]

MY shaper is the earlier Alba 1A which the Elliott 10M evolved from. The original motor for mine should have been a 3 phase running at 915 rpm so most likely it would have been a 6 pole 3 phase unit. When I got the shaper someone had fitted a 4 pole 3 phase motor converted to run on single phase with capacitors. This motor ran too fast and was gutless with poor torque. I eventually managed to source a single phase 6 pole motor with suitable horsepower for the shaper which runs at approximately 950 rpm and all runs very nicely now.

[@RustyInventions-wz6ir]

Just found your channel and Subscribed. Very nice work

[@ThePottingShedWorkshop]

Thanks! The second part will be up this week. Be warned, its not as exciting, just preparing to cut the gear.

[@nickdecker2350]

Thanks for providing video of this!! You've done a great job!

[@ThePottingShedWorkshop]

Thanks very much!

[@frankjames4573]

This is a bit advanced for me... But interesting stuff... I am a retired carpenter, but have developed an interest in metal working. I have a small cheap lathe, and am soon to buy a mill! Frank...

[@ThePottingShedWorkshop]

Thanks for watching. You need to be careful. Thats how I started, 25 years woodturning as a hobby, then bought a minilathe, then a mini mill, then a "proper" lathe (used in the upcoming video), finally ending up with a workshop full of vintage machines, some older than me!

[@frankjames4573]

@@ThePottingShedWorkshop Yeah, I regret buying the lathe I have... It was cheap and small, but I have to work on a peppercorn budget, so I had little choice ! I have tried to improve it where it's within my skill set. Are you going to be making some bits and bobs, tooling, ect... I would be following your vids in the future! Frank...

[@ThePottingShedWorkshop]

@@frankjames4573 Yes, I have plans after the gear cutting attachment for 2 more video series but it will take me a while to get round to filming them. It took me over a year to take the plunge to do this series!

[@frankjames4573]

@@ThePottingShedWorkshop I bet it did ... look forward to watching them...

[@stovepipe666]

Nice work

[@ThePottingShedWorkshop]

Thanks!

[@thomasstover6272]

Splendid machine!

[@thomasstover6272]

Beautiful work, and the engineering is impressive. I like the application of crossed helical gears for the angle drive! Very compact and quiet as well. I used bevel gears in my last project…your design achieves an elegance that is still my aspiration. Well done…and your video quality is excellent, too!

[@ThePottingShedWorkshop]

​@@thomasstover6272Thanks for watching! I used helicals rather than bevel gears as 1) I've cut helicals before but not bevel gears and 2) the helicals are far more compact. The helicals might be quieter, but you'd be hard pressed to tell with the racket of the rest of the gear train!

[@thomasstover6272]

@@ThePottingShedWorkshop I have cut bevel gears before (using the method from Law’s book), and vowed never to do that again. Not hard but very tedious. I’m just getting my hobbing machine to 45 deg helix angle, and I think a crossed drive is in my near future! Looking forward to your next video!

[@thomasstover6272]

Robert, I have to tell you that 11/14 ratio for pi/4 kept me up last night. I think I understand why you did that…you have to convert table movement to angular displacement at the pitch circle, which will always involve pi. Very clever design! It’s possible you could generate constant depth bevel gear teeth by the same method, which would be very cool!

[@ThePottingShedWorkshop]

@@thomasstover6272 Thank you. I thought attempting to cancel out pi (to within 0.04%!) would make it easier to synthesize the ratio accurately given I only have a choice of 13 gears (although there's no reason why I can't make more!). If you have an idea how to generate bevel gears, please share it! From what I could work out, I would need some sort of indexing system on the end of the spindle to rotate the gear blank at a different angle. The next 2 videos are almost done. Probably not that exciting, machining a gear blank is fairly run of the mill and watching the shaper cut gears is definately soporiphic! After that I'll do one on the helical cutting variant.