While I know better than to walk away during a lathe turning operation, that doesn\'t mean that I don\'t do it. Usually not a problem but this time I was not so lucky. The carriage jammed into the headstock and mangle the teeth on the drive pinion bending the pinion shaft. Fortunately the rack was not damaged at all. Since getting replacement parts is wishful thinking, you either make a replacement or turn the machine into a wood lathe. The pinion is a 1.5 Module, 13 Tooth, 20 Deg gear.
I thought I would share my experience cutting Shaved Gears on the 1100. I use the Gearotic software package to generate G-Code to produced spur and helical gears. Since the the teeth are cut by shaving to generate the involute, they are very accurate in form when compared to teeth cut with a conventional involute cutters.
The gear shown here is from my lathe saddle that meshes with the bed rack to drive the saddle. This gear had broken teeth and a bent shaft due to being jammed in feed. The blank was cut from a piece of pre-hardened 4340 (Rc36) and mounted in the 4th axis using a collet chuck. The teeth were cut using a 1/16\" carbide end mill. This didn\'t set speed records but when the teeth were measured using my gear tooth caliper the variation was very small and essentially on nominal size. Replaced gear works better than new with very minimal backlash.
I have used this to cut several gear sets with very good results.
nitewatchman
