by William J. Haworth
I have never been one to let “a lack of machine capacity” prevent me from attempting a project! I was faced with the following issue: I needed to bore an aluminum bicycle wheel whose diameter was 20″. Since my lathe was 13″ (with no gap) and the throat dimension of my mill was only about 15″, I had no way to do the task!
I thought about it for a while and came up with the following solution: tilt the mill head. This way, the bicycle wheel could be placed on either side of the mill column and the boring could be done. I mounted the wheel on a tilting rotary table (set to the same angle as the mill head) and then simply indicated in the wheel bore and machined it. This has probably been thought of some time earlier, but, perhaps my mentioning it will remind others with limited capacity to feel free to “think outside the box.”
Thanks William! Your subscription has been extended by an issue!
