Adapting a Taig slitting saw holder for the Sherline

This documents my procedure for adapting a Taig Slitting Saw holder to work on my Sherline. In retrospect, I would have done a number of things differently if I was going to do this again.

Note: I took these pictures a couple of years before I did the writeup.

Assembled Arbor

This is the assembled arbor, as received from Carter Tools. The slitting saw arbor is around $5 and the blank arbors are around $3. Bigger...

The Pieces

These are the various pieces. Bigger...

Registration area

The Taig mill has a registration area with no threads. You can see this here. You can just see some scores made by the threading tool. Bigger...

Sherline Spindle

This is the Sherline Spindle. Bigger...

Mounted Arbor

And this is the mounted arbor. Note that due to the size of the registration area, there is only about 1.5 threads of engagment. Bigger...

Indicate

This was my first mistake. I also find it interesting that there is a 4 jaw in the picture here, but in the later photos where I did the actual machining, it's quite clear that a 3 jaw was used. The mistake was performing the indicating on the outside of the arbor. I should have indicated on the inside of the registration area. Bigger...

Remove Excess

Here, the excess registration area is being removed. This is clearly a 3 jaw being used. Also, if you look closely, you can see a faint horizontal line on the arbor about half way between the jaws. This was left as the original stock was pushed through by an automatic feeder. Bigger...

Chamfer Outside

I then carefully chamfered the outside corner. Bigger...

Chamfer Inside

And the inside corner, as well as cleaning up any irregularities that might have been left by the parting tool. Bigger...

Fix it

Well, when I mounted the arbor on my mill, my slitting saw had a large amount of runout. In retrospect, I no longer find this suprising. My solution was to mount the slitting saw arbor directly on the spindle and true up the critical surfaces. The outside portion is mostly cosmetic, but I find it easier to look at when it isn't wobbling. Bigger...

Finished

I also trued up the end-cap and marked the alignment so that I could mount it in the trued up position. The slitting holder bow runs very true. Bigger...


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