build your own full float dana 44?

naw, man they're fine. Those are at least grade 5. itll be alrigh:easy rider:t.

 

Made a test shaft out of the extra piece of chevy axle to see if I can cut splines on.


going to make a cutting tool out of this old piece of shaft I found in my junk pile. It broke and then someone used it as a hammer so I trued it up and put it in a collet. I have since faced it and cut the OD.

 

Will this be like a boring bar when it is done?

 

No a holder for a single carbide tooth to cut the splines with. I want to do 3 and I might still. Brain overheating from thinking too muchhh. trammed in mill....

Wait, YES like a boring bar exactly! except the bar will turn and the work will be stationary. oooooo you smart..

 

Are we stationary and the world revolves around us...........or do we move and the world stands still.....that is the true question????

 

No more questions, only answers!
I made that cutter head.


Works fine. I did 4 passes to make that groove. I didn't set it up perfect and it cut just below center. Its also too deep. No indexer, no divider, just in the vise with a couple V blocks. It works satisfactorily. Not clean and perfect but would suffice. I think the idea of affixing the old D30 spline shaft on the end of the new D44 shaft ad using it as a pattern would work just fine. It really could be done without a dividing head. I am confident in this, but its a whole lotta work to save 150 bucks. The cutter head cost me nothing, just about 3 hours of work. Another person could have probably done it in 15 minutes, but I never made a cutter head before. This one I cut the shaft to 11/16 OD, put it in an r8 collet and it ran absolutely true. I cut the slot for the carbide insert and then couterbored the hole for the head and threaded the other side. It didn't give enough clamping pressure, so I took a 3/4 carbide roughing end mill and cut away the side to allow it to bend over slightly under mechanical clamping pressure. It worked really well. I also made sure that I threaded a part that would be over the edge of the triangle insert so that it couldn't just fly out. If i made a cutter hear with 3 inserts the spline cutting would be cleaner and faster. Im not that good yet and It would probably take me an extra 5 hours to do that. All in all, I learned a lot by making this tool. I also learned that I don't want to manually cut 54 splines. 3 bucks a spline from Moser? totally worth it. Next step is to figure out how to get someone to cut these splines. I guess I call someone (Moser, Currie, Dutchman etc) when I get time next week.

 

That looks great! That would take a lot of patience to cut all those splines...... Well now you know you can do it. Do any of your local job shops cut splines?

 

I have trouble finding local guys to do much of anything around here. I did look up Currie, they want like 100 bucks a set to respline, moser wants like 120 a set and I would have to call Dutchman. Its fairly reasonable. Herms axles are 420 bucks. http://hermtheoverdriveguy.com/?page_id=1611 I paid 160 for my D44 chevy axles and at least another 150 for respline and shipping. Its going to be over 300 bucks for axleshafts. Herms price is actually a good price for what he is offering. I guess his are made such that you must remove the spindle to pull out the axle shaft though. Its either that his shafts are not cut all the way or his spindles are not bored. I do not know.

If I had a dividing head and cut in 2 more slots for carbide inserts in the cutter near I made, the spline cutting would not be that big of a deal. I say that now, but i am also not holding a drive flange that isn't fitting after all that work. I think there could be some likelihood of that issue occurring.

 

Could you back away from the machine and show the whole set up? I'm a tad confused about how you did this and pic showing the machine would clarify it a bunch, I think. I am impressed. I'd love to see you finish these up yourself, though I understand it is time and cost prohibitive.

 

Alright Dave. I will give a larger picture. I will also go into a little more detail about what I did. As usual it will be long and boring.

Remember, I am not a machinist, have zero training and some of what I do might be wrong and there is probably a much better way to do whatever it is I am doing. Speak up if you see something I do wrong or could improve with your own experiences. Once again, I like to learn.

Viewer discretion is advised as some might not be able to handle the rats nest of a shop I have. You have been forewarned.

I bought my Clausing lathe and my Taiwanese Bridgeport clone about a year ago. It was manufactured in 1979. Before that I did not have a mill. I bought the lathe, loaded it up in the back of my pickup and drove it home. I took it fully apart and carried it into my basement and put it back together. I went back a week later and bought the mill. I could not see either of them actually run before I bought them because the owner had never been able to figure out how to wire in 3 phase even though he had a 10HP commercially made radial phase converter sitting on the floor. Both the lathe and the mill were well used and had some surface rust and filth combined with some real bad wiring from the PO trying to electrocute himself and anyone else who had the misfortune of touching the mill or lathe. I made the guy sell me all the tooling and the cabinets that contained it at the time. I paid 1100.00 for the lathe and 900 for the mill. Without the tooling it was a fair price. The tooling made it a great deal.

I got the mill home and took it apart to get it in my basement by myself. It weighs 2100lbs or so. I took it apart, built a wooden gantry and used pallet jacks, engine hoists, come alongs and chain falls to get it into my basement. It took a day. I took my time, worked safe and nothing got broken, smashed or even scratched. I piped it into place and leveled it.

I wired in the 3 phase mill and turned it on. The power down feed is not right, but not broken. Its just wore out. The spindle bearing used to make a bit of noise, but they no longer do. The machines just needed to be used. i guess the owner bought them 15~20 years ago at an auction and never used them. Both the mill and the lathe are not safe modern machines. Neither have low voltage dropout relays or any safety devices other than the covers over the belt drives. You need to pay attention.

The mill is entirely manual with no power cross feed, no Digital Read Out (DRO), NOT a variable speed head or any of that stuff. The knee elevation motor is like 300 bucks, so I just took an old 1/2 drill, cut off the knee mill elevation handle and chucked it up in the drill. 25 buck used drill...The hand crank is a PITA.

This is the mill. The round wheel on the head advances the spindle down or up. The wheels on either side of the table will move the table and therefore the work left to right. The wheel in the front moves the table toward the back or toward you. To the left is a camelback drill that is belt driven. It has a transmission that will go down to 30 RPM in conjunction with belt drives for making big holes with twist drills. Its about 1925 or 1930. Works great. Its really an awesome old tool that I have used once. It takes up space in my shop that I could use for something else, but its beautiful in design and function. Has exposed gear driven power down feed that is totally not safe and drops out when the spindle hits a lever that disengages the gears at a set depth. "watch out boy, she'll chew you up".


This is the cutter I made. The shank is 11/16 and fits in that 11/16 collet that then slides up in the head where a threaded "draw bar" pulls it tight and closes the collet. The middle step is not concentric but the shank and the cutter head are. Making this tool required the use of a lathe and the mill. As I stated before, the steel is something random I found in my pile of steel junk. The cap screw is 1/4-20. I bought a pallet of these cap screws in assorted sizes from 8-32 to 1/2-13. all American made, some with mil-spec and certificates of conformity.


I "trammed" in my mill by installing a indicator holder I made into a collet and then into the head. The head can move in and out, left and right forward and back and angle toward you or back. You then run this along the table and make sure the numbers are the same one side to the to the other and front to back. Once this is right you then bolt on the vise and do the same thing indicating in the non movable part of the vise. After you do that you install your work, in this case held in with VEE blocks and indicate that in to as close to zero as possible.


After that you stuff the collet and tool into the mill head and draw it tight. In order to take a cut you need to find the outside edge of the work to cut the spline. There are ways to do this that I don't have a clear understanding of how to do without a DRO, so for the initial cut, I just eyeballed it and it wasn't perfect. I was just looking for proof of concept, so I wasn't looking for perfection. I was also tired. Should have just walked away, but...





I am not apposed to cutting splines. If when I call moser or currie or whoever and if they irritate me, I will just do it myself. To do that I would probably make another slot to hold another cutter in the cutter head I fabricated. I would also play with the spindle speed. I took that cut on the lowest spindle speed. Increasing the speed will probably make a better cut and may negate the need for another carbide insert in the head.

As far as money is concerned, I could just buy this whole kit for 750 bucks and bolt it on. If you don't have a lathe with over 48" between centers and a mill, its the cheap answer. I happen to have these large stationary tools, want to learn and am infinitely stubborn. There is no real way for me to learn anything without doing it and no reason to learn anything unless I will be doing it, so thats how things work in my head. Doesn't really ever make economic sense, but how much is the knowledge of how to make a thing worth?

 

VERY interesting. Thanks for the clear description of the process. I doubt you need or want anyone to egg you on, especially one not in the know but, keep at 'er Hoss.

I'm assuming that the cutting bits come in various sizes, or rather, with different angles at the tip for different degree cuts. Say, the V cut for the splines requires a 130* V notch, or a 120* V notch. (Sorry, sometimes not good at asking clear questions when I am unfamiliar with the subject.)

 

Guess what? I don't know! I just stuck a carbide insert in the splines of a D30 outer and it fit perfect, now there are different sizes and i have one pack that is smaller and doesn't fit. This is by no means the only way that splines are cut. they are hobbed, rolled and probably other ways that I don't know. There are involute and others, but all i did was see a spline, the cutter fit and i made the cut. It looks as though lots of people have done a similar thing. there is or was a company making 3 wing cutters, but for the price to buy I would just send them off. To do it right you need a minimum of a 7~800 dollar dividing head and the right cutter, neither of which I'm going to do. When i get back from my job i will see how bored i get or how irritated i am with sending the shafts out.

The other cool thing about this exercise is that i can now cut gears. Yes Gears! I often need small gears and have looked at possibly making them for custom applications or replacements that are made of unobtanium. they are typically under 1.5 inches in diameter, so they are totally doable. I could easily grind a custom cutter for that propose out of HSS. Zero chance of making any gears for transmissions or real load bearing gears though. The other cool thing is that I now know how to make a cutter head that works and works as well as any commercially available one for a custom and specific purpose.

Maybe now everyone else does too. Cool.

 

I think I am going to send my axle shafts out to Moser. I called Hudlow in Ga who came up in a search, but the guy just didn't understand what I wanted. He also wanted 150 bucks for the pair. Moser wants 125 bucks for the pair and seemed professional and able to competently and clearly answer my questions. I'll send them out today and see what happens. Hope they don't get wrecked.

as an aside but still on topic

I looked in my Enco flyer and saw the spin indexer that i was told about. 85 bucks or so, uses 5C collets and the next page had a 5C collet backed 3 jaw chuck for 90 bucks or so. For 200 bucks you could have a cheap set up to index your axle and cut those splines. All you would then need is to either buy or make an adjustable stand to hold a morse taper socket to shove a dead center in.

As Tarry said, sometimes its much more cost and time effective to just have someone else do things. I do not regret one second of time I spent to learn how to do this stuff though. For me the knowledge is priceless.

 

And not yet taxable!

 

Axle shafts are packed and going to FedEx tonight. I called Moser, Hudlow and Currie. The Hudlow guy wanted 150 and really wasn't sure what I wanted. Currie only works on Currie stuff, but did direct me to a place called Cooks. Moser was easy to deal with and had good communication skills. They want 125 bucks. So, off to Moser they go.

 

I've heard good things about Moser. Good luck!

 

Yeah....i'm pretty sure they parted the red sea......didn't they?

 

Bwahahahaha! better part those splines pharos ramses something there.

 

Well, My shafts finally made it to Moser, Just got the call stating so.

So this is the price to respline to the D30, 27 spline sample with the groove cut for the snap ring and shipping back to my house - 171.00 bucks or so. I spent 27 bucks to get them out here and 161 to get them initially.

359.00 is going to be my total cost, not including my labor. Cant put a price on education, but for about 100 bucks more I could have just got Herms shafts. Oh well.

 

But the satisfaction of making them yourself is priceless!