keyways

IS YOUR MACHINE SHOP limited to a lathe?

No matter; you can teach a lathe to perform
nearly all machining operations. Start with cutting
keyways in shafts of various diameters.
You can hold straight-shank end mills in a
collet chuck or taper-shank adapter in the head-
stock spindle. You'll have to make the sturdy
clamp you mount on the compound rest to posi-
tion the work. The carriage and crossfeed screws
let you move the work into the cutter and draw
it past. Thus you can cut both open-end keyways
and blind slots.
One such clamping fixture can be made of
heavy angle (Fig. 1) bored to take the toolpost
and clamped to the rest by a steel bar in the
toolpost slot. After it's in place mill a V-groove
across its face (cross section) by mounting an
angular cutter in the headstock and drawing the
work past it with the cross feed. This lets you
clamp the work in an accurate horizontal plane
at lathe-center.
An alternate fixture (Fig. 2) is a steel block
bored to receive a flanged post (like the lower

Mill keyways end of the toolpost) so you can clamp it to the

compound rest's T-slot with a large capscrew.
Figs. 3 and 4 show setups with a Woodruff

on your lathe keyway cutter; the cut is made at right angles

to the spindle. Woodruff keyseats are made by
clamping the work in a vertical position and
By C. W. WOODSON
feeding it into the cutter. Again, an accurate
V-groove helps to position the work quickly and
accurately.

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