RFQ: Keyslot milling in alu round stock.

I've been looking at one of my long standing, unfinished projects and had a brainwave today, but it involves cutting five equally spaced, 1.5mm wide, 15mm long, 1mm(ish) deep slots around the centre of a piece of 20mm diameter aluminium stock.

These are to keep the vanes of a five spoked wheel aligned and to provide some mechanical connection. The parts will be epoxied as well, to form the main strength of the bond.

Wheel C is the real thing I'm trying to emulate:

http://the.shadock.free.fr/sherman_m...m4a375w_55.jpg

I've had the centre disk and vanes/spokes waterjet cut already, but was worried about how to align them, and this looked, on paper, to be a good way to get everything straight. I'd have to get the vanes/spokes cut again with a tab to fit the slot, but that's pretty trivial to arrange.

Is this feasible, or is it likely to kill more bits than it's worth ? There would be 12 in a set, and I'd probably require 5 sets in total.

Adrian.

Hi Adrian
As no one else has responded i will try and help, i would make these from mild steel. make outer rim inside bore to size, leave a tad on the OD for a final skim to size. machine the centre boss OD to size ID slightly undersize, again to skim after assembly, also machine a spigot to locate the disc portion, machine disc to fit inside the rim and locate on the spigot on the boss. manufacture alignment jig to align the ribs(aluminium ring with 5 radial slots) next bit depends on your equipment, ideally assemble components and using TIG on lowest amps fuse the webs to the rim & centre boss, remove jig flux assembly and silver solder, soak in water overnight to remove flux, machine a spindle assembly to hold wheel via the boss, set in 4 jaw chuck skim OD to final size, re-chuck & finish the bore and skim the front face. simples
Of course if you don't have a lathe u is fu**ed. but i assume you is a model maker so probably do.
Regards
Mike

Thanks Mike :encouragement:

I think I followed all that :whistle:

I do have a lathe, and have already drawn up plans for the jig to hold the ribs in place, just wanted to add some more mechanical rigidity to the wheel. It's not going to be doing more than 50rpm at any point, so ultimate strength and balancing isn't really an issue.

Adrian.