Machine Tool Attachments, Which to Use For What?

When you hear the words machine tool attachments what do you think of?  What comes to mind?  Do you think to yourself, “What is a machine tool attachment?” or do you think, “I need more machine tool attachments.”  No matter where you are at in life at some point you will probably need to use some type of machine tool attachment or ask someone to use an attachment to do something for you.  Either way, let’s take a look at the different types of machine tool attachments that are available.

There are basic attachments that will go with different types of machines.  Let’s take a look at some of the machines and some of the accessories that come with the machines: 

1.        Centre lathes:  Chucks, collets, face plate, steady and follower rests, centres, tool holders and more.

2.       Drilling Machines:  Vices, clamps, drill chuck, sockets and more.

3.       Shaping and Planing Machines:  Vices, clamps, tool holders and more. 

4.       Milling Machines:  Vices, clamps, parallel blocks, collets, job support like tailstock and more.

Generally many of these accessories can be purchased with the machine tool, but attachments are usually an extra and are purchased separately.  These meet more of a specific need.  Let’s take a look at some of the attachments that are can be purchased to be used with the different machines.

1.        Centre lathes:  Taper turning attachment, copy turning attachments, milling and cylindrical grinding attachments, spherical turning attachments and relieving attachments.

2.       Drilling Machines:  Tapping attachment

3.       Shaping Machines:  Double cut tool head, thread rolling attachment and gear teeth cutting.

4.       Planing Machines:  Contour forming attachment, Helical grooving attachment, oil grooving attachments and milling and grinding attachments.

5.       Milling Machines:  Universal milling attachment, indexing / dividing head, rotary table and slotting attachment.

This might all be sounding pretty foreign to you, so let’s take a look at some of the attachments individually and see what each of them do.  This might help have a better understanding of the different attachments.

Let’s take a look at different machine tool attachments and what they do for the Centre lathes: 

Taper turning attachment:  Jobs with wide ranges of length and angle of taper are easily machine by using this simple attachment. 

Copy Turning Attachment:  The two common types of copy turning are mechanical and hydraulic.  

Mechanical copying:  The entire attachment is mounted on the saddle after removing the cross slide from that.  The template replicating the job profile desired is clamped at a suitable position on the bed.  The stylus is fitted in the spring loaded tool slide and while travelling longitudinally along with saddle moves in transverse direction according to the template profile.  This enables the cutting tool to produce the same profile as the job indicated.

Hydraulic Copying attachment:  The stylus moves along the template profile to replicate it on the job.  With hydraulic copying the attachment is a little costly than the mechanical type, but works more smoothly and accurately. 

Milling attachment:  This comprises of a motor, a small gear box and a spindle to hold the milling cutter which then is mounted on the saddle after removing the cross slide.  Milling attachments are generally used for making flat surfaces, straight and helical grooves, spines, long and deep screw threads, worms and other things of this nature. 

Grinding attachment:  This is very similar to the milling attachment.  This attachment is more for external and internal cylindrical grinding, finishing grooves, splines, etc.  These attachments cannot provide high accuracy and finish.

Spherical turning attachments:  These are a simple attachment that is used in centre lathes for machining spherical; both convex and concave surfaces and similar surfaces. 

Relieving attachment:  Machining and grinding of such curved flanks of the teeth need relieving motion to the tool.  The tool is made up of a spring loaded bracket which holds the cutting tool and is radially reciprocated on the saddle.

Thread Pitch correcting attachment:  While cutting screw thread in centre lathes by single point chasing tool the actual pitch can often be off.  This problem can be corrected by a simple differential mechanism.  This mechanism can also be used for intentionally cutting thread whose pitch will be essentially slightly more or less than the standard pitch.  This is often used for making differential screws having threads of slightly different pitch at two different locations of the screw.

Now, let’s look at the machine tool for the drilling attachments:

Tapping attachment:  Tapping of nuts for their internal threads is often done with a drilling machine by using the tapping attachment.  Doing a reversal on this can damage the threads.

The shaping machines are often used for extending the processing capabilities of the shaping machines.  These machines also help get some of the unusual work in done in an ordinary shaping machine. Let’s take a look at some of those attachments: 

Attachment for double cut:  This is a simple attachment that is rigidly mounted on the vertical face of the ram and replaces the clapper box.  This enhances the productivity by utilizing both the strokes in the shaping machines.

Thread Rolling Attachment:  The thread of fasteners is done by mass production methods.  Thread rolling is hardly done nowadays in shaping machines. 

Matterson’s attachment:  This tool can produce gear teeth even in shaping machine by generation process.  The teeth and the blank is rotated and after completion they return to their initial positions and then after indexing the blank for one tooth, the work motions are repeated.

Now let’s take a look at the attachments for planning machines:

Contour forming attachment:  This is a simple and low cost attachment that can be used in planning machines for producing 2D form of circular section in long heavy tables or beds. 

Helical grooving attachment:  The long lead helical grooves on large rod type jobs can be done easily and inexpensively in a planning machine. 

Finally, let’s take a look at a couple of the attachments used with milling machines:

Universal milling attachment:  For milling by solid end mill type and face milling cutters, separate vertical axis type milling machines are available.  Horizontal arbour type milling machines can also be used for those operations.

Indexing or dividing head:  This attachment is so widely needed and used that it is often considered an accessory.  This attachment is used for equi-angular rotation by simple compound or differential indexing of the job while maching.

There is much more information on several these attachments, but this gets you started.  Machine tool attachments are great for so many different things.