Thread: Slotted balls

Originally Posted by POD

When I did the caster correction on my last car, I took the swivel housings to a local engineering shop, the bloke who owns the shop, whom I know reasonably well, said that if he were to take the job on, he would set his apprentice to it with a file rather than use the mill. Lamented about how filing is getting to be a lost art and everyone wants to do everything by machine, etc....explained how with a job like this it takes longer to set up in a machine than it would take to do with a file- also about $100 per hour more expensive.

I did mine with an end mill in the drill press, cos I'm just as lazy a git as the rest of you lot. It was very hard on the morse taper of the drill press as they are not intended to take side loads.
I think SteveG's suggestion would result in drunken holes as well as a drunk observer, as the drill would cut into the guide in an unpredictable manner. Might work with an end mill with flutes shorter than the thickness of the guide plate.
My next set are going to be done with a milling arrangement in the lathe, using the jig I fabricated for the drill press arrangement. I could offer to do Duarte's but no way I would be able to spend the time to do a job like this within the next several weeks.

It doesn't. There's plenty of meat in the guide, and you'd only be using each guide hole once. Typically you're cutting more than half a hole in the swivel so its cutting around most of the drill circumference and therefore not a lot of side load. I did my last set using a 15mm block with a single hole which I moved from hole to hole. After 7 holes it was starting to show a bit of wear so I used a new block for the second swivel.
The swivel is located by the raised center portion which sits inside the axle housing, so even if the holes/slots aren't perfect it doesn't affect the setup.

Steve

I like the sound of your technique Steve, I would have thought the flutes of the drill would bite more than that when drilling off centre of an existing hole, but if it works, great. You could even use the bolt ring of a stuffed swivel housing as a template, cut the rest off in a lathe. The bolts do just provide clamping force rather than actually locating the thing, I put in 2 extra bolts with non-slotted holes to prevent any rotation but in reality I can't see the thing rotating anyway once clamped up.