Dan Dubeau
Ultra Member
For those not familiar with the Newbould indexer, please do yourself a favour and go read the fascinating tale of it's invention, told by it's inventor over at Practical Machinist. It's a great shame that none of the pictures show up anymore. But the story itself is certainly worth a read. I still hold out hope that somebody out there somewhere has the pictures saved, and at some point will help restore them, and the thread. With RJ now gone, it's a piece of history worth saving IMO.
https://www.practicalmachinist.com/forum/threads/ot-the-mother-of-invention.159279/
Photocredit to walla.tool
I'm starting this thread because I want to make one. Eventually....
One of the takeaways I had that I still remember from reading that thread back then was that the plastic indexing rings, were plastic for a reason as they absorbed slight imperfections, and that their overall accuracy wasn't too important to the inherent accuracy of the tool itself.....Lightbulb moment, I have no doubt we can 3d resin print the indexing rings, and machine the rest......This thought came to me out of the blue this morning, so I went off on a scouring mission to see if somebody else has had the same thought and has modeled it up since. No dice, but I did find the smithsonian has started scanning artifacts and uploading them for printing... That sent me off on a fun tangent for a while until I could get back to making this post.....
Anyway....I'm going to chip away at this, Probably not for a while as I wrap up other projects on the go, but if anybody else is also interested in a fun modeling project let's see if we can tackle this and bring this invention back into the light. I do not know if patents, or copyrights still exist on this, so hopefully we don't step on toes here, but I think it would be a fun thing to have back in the world, and a great way to pay homage to RJ and this amazing invention.
https://www.practicalmachinist.com/forum/threads/ot-the-mother-of-invention.159279/
Photocredit to walla.tool
I'm starting this thread because I want to make one. Eventually....
One of the takeaways I had that I still remember from reading that thread back then was that the plastic indexing rings, were plastic for a reason as they absorbed slight imperfections, and that their overall accuracy wasn't too important to the inherent accuracy of the tool itself.....Lightbulb moment, I have no doubt we can 3d resin print the indexing rings, and machine the rest......This thought came to me out of the blue this morning, so I went off on a scouring mission to see if somebody else has had the same thought and has modeled it up since. No dice, but I did find the smithsonian has started scanning artifacts and uploading them for printing... That sent me off on a fun tangent for a while until I could get back to making this post.....
Anyway....I'm going to chip away at this, Probably not for a while as I wrap up other projects on the go, but if anybody else is also interested in a fun modeling project let's see if we can tackle this and bring this invention back into the light. I do not know if patents, or copyrights still exist on this, so hopefully we don't step on toes here, but I think it would be a fun thing to have back in the world, and a great way to pay homage to RJ and this amazing invention.