Last week while surfing through eBay, I stumbled across a used 8-station turret like the ones on a Hardinge Chucker! Immidiately I placed a bid and slapped a massive MAX bid on top of that to ensure I would win this little gem! And I did!
It arrived today, and when I opend the box it looked perfect! Upon a more serious examination, I saw that the previous owner had taken a 2" diameter pnumatic sanding disk and pollished all the external surfaces to make it nice and shiny!
Well, that proceduer had distroyed all the precision surfaces, so I disassembed the turret, and proceeded to remachine all the parts to restore it's precision! The octagonal turret fit nicely in my 3-jaw chuck, and with a dial indicator through the center hole I was able to dial in the precision surface on the inside! Then I took a .005" face cut ant now it looks perfect! The micrometer shows a .0003" out of parallel condition.
The overall quality is fantastic, as every part is chrome plated and ground and heat treated! The underside of the cast iron turret and it's mating part is also Chrome plated and ground! This turret has a pneumatic valve to relax the turret for manual indexing in either direction!
All I need to get is a few new rubber o-rings!
The base plate is also cast iron, chrome plated on the top side and heavily sanded by the previous owner, resulting in a tapered surface of .006" So I put it in my mill, and took a skim cut across the butchered surface!
Total cost with shipping was: $145.67