I've been making a lot of threads lately, so what's one more!

I need a 5C spindle for my CNC gang-lathe build, but unfortunately 5C spindles by themselves are kind of hard to come by. I almost got my hands on a great Dunham 50M spindle, but I missed it unfortunately.

I was thinking about building a spindle completely from scratch, but making the spindle body is a little challenging for the equipment and skills that I have. Building the headstock will be difficult, but I think within my reach.

So, I have decided to make a spindle using the guts of a 5C spin indexer.

I bought a spin indexer from LittleMachineShop: Indexing Spin Jig, 5C - LittleMachineShop.com with the intention of evaluating it for the purpose.

After getting the spin indexer I was a little worried at first impression, but after pulling it apart, wiping it down and taking some measurements I am quite reassured. The OD of the indexer spindle varies only 0.0002" between the nose and heel end, it does slope in the wrong direction (larger toward the heel) but I think that can be worked around.

The spindle wall just behind the taper is about 0.125", the spindle wall behind the shoulder is 0.2"

The OD of the spindle body is 1.7715" at the midpoint, 1.7714" behind the shoulder at the nose end and 1.7716" at the heel. This means that 45mm ID bearings should fit it quite nicely.

Next step is to measure up the spindle for CAD and draw up the headstock assembly.