I recently made a clamp style knurler as described by Martin Cleve:
I had the bump knurler which was part of the Phase II toolpost so the
knurls from this were installed in my shiny new knurler and away I
went. But, now that I've got it, I find I don't really know how to
use it.
According to the article, you position the knurls on opposite sides
of the stationary work and close the arms until the knurls just
touch, withdraw the tool somewhat, and close the arms 1/3 turn or so
of the adjuster. Then the tool is advanced on the spinning work using
the cross feed plus lots of cutting oil (and elbow grease). When I
do this it produces a nice knurl on 1/2" and 1" steel parts but the
force required via the cross feed seems excessive.
Each time I knurl using this technique the cross feed develops
several mils of backlash and needs readjustment. My suspicion is that
the excessive force is causing rapid wear to the brass nut on the
cross feed leadscrew.
My original notion was to position the knurls with no pressure
applied and then use the adjuster to close the tool until the desired
knurl was produced, requiring no force to the cross feed. The torque
needed on the adjuster to do this is beyond me -- knurling steel
takes a LOT of pressure; perhaps this would work with aluminum but I
haven't tried that yet.
I thought about trying multiple passes, advancing the adjuster much
less, say 1/16 turn, each pass but don't know how to synchronize to
avoid doubling of the pattern so haven't tried this.
So, is there a better way to use this tool? Do I need to add a thrust
bearing to the adjuster? Should I ditch the knurled adjuster and make
a hex nut so I can use a (big) wrench? Would the cross feed situation
get better if I split the brass nut per the mod suggested in the 7x10
group's files?
John
