Development of low cost programmable indexing head for horizontal milling machine

CNC machining nowadays makes more use of Mechatronics. Combining numerical control with mechanical, electronics, and data processing systems can lead to newer methods of production. In the present work, a microcontroller based programmable indexing head for horizontal milling machine has been developed. The developed programmable indexing head consist mainly of three systems i.e. mechanical system, electronics system and application software system. It has been observed that the mechanical advantage (MA)of the developed machine is more than the traditional indexing head, and also has the capability of self-locking. As compared to the production on traditional indexing head, the manufacturing of a gear on the developed indexing head results in a saving of 44.4 seconds time per gear. At the same time, it also results in 62.03% reduction in the cost of developed indexing head. It also saves 93.67% time wasted in changing the indexing plates in traditional indexing head.