# New Rockshaft for my tractor



## Thomas (Dec 21, 2022)

Been awhile since I posted anything but work and life have severely limited my screen time this year. I traded my ATV for a nice little Ford 1110 tractor and while it needed some work it was far more useful to me than the 2009 Kawasaki brute force that I only managed to rack up 1200km in 12 years. Anyway I thought finding parts wouldn't be a problem but it turns out these tractors are orphans and the one part that breaks on all of them is the rockshaft for the three point hitch lift. I decided to build it myself and went with 4340, my little 9" Utilathe actually did a half decent job turning it but I couldn't take more than a 0.020" cut at a time. Now my next step is cutting the splines, I have access to a dividing head and milling machine at work but need to order a cutting tool and from what I can figure I have a metric involute spline.


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## phaxtris (Dec 21, 2022)

Are you going to harden + temper it once you cut the splines ?

If you can't find the right cutter online you could always sharpen the profile on an hss blank and fly cut the threads


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## Thomas (Dec 21, 2022)

The original shaft is softer than the 4340 I turned the new one out of and I don't plan on using it to lift for more that a 400lb box scarper to level out my driveway so I think I will leave it as is. I'm going Frank Fales tomorrow to see about a cutter, they supply our machine shop if their sales guy Neil can find it then it doesn't exist.


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## Proxule (Dec 21, 2022)

43xx stuff machines amazing with some carbide!
It has some thing like 100K tensile steenght!
Is yours annealed version?

Nice work!


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## Thomas (Dec 21, 2022)

Proxule said:


> 43xx stuff machines amazing with some carbide!
> It has some thing like 100K tensile steenght!
> Is yours annealed version?
> 
> Nice work!


Don't believe it was annealed, I had to knock the mill scale off it with a grinder before I could cut it with HSS, and it near fried a blade on my portable band saw cutting a 1.5" piece of it.


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## DPittman (Dec 21, 2022)

Thomas said:


> Don't believe it was annealed, I had to knock the mill scale off it with a grinder before I could cut it with HSS, and it near fried a blade on my portable band saw cutting a 1.5" piece of it.


If it is not annealed at least somewhat, I don't thing you'll be able to flycut it with hss without constant resharpening at the very least.


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