ajbvicau
6th Aug 2021, 12:22 AM
I had a play today and had a go at making a larger cross slide dial for the lathe to make it easier to read and use.
First up I had to setup an index wheel with 100 graduations, I made this using a CAD program, printed it up and taped it onto the 3 jaw chuck as a template and then using the tool post with a sharp tool on its side I scribed the marks onto the body of the 3 jaw chuck for future reference. I also made up an index wheel that I can clamp behind the chuck, it has multiple sets of graduations from 100 down. The CAD program made that easy enough. Ideally a locking index plate or some other arrangment would be perfect however for this 1st go a simple pointer and holding the chuck each graduation did the job ok although I did fail to hold the chuck tight enough on a couple of the tail stock marks and they are out a bit - I dont think that will be a critical issue for drilling from the tail stock.
I didnt want to make a new threaded bush to provide clearance for a bigger dial so I made a sleve and cut away the section where the cross slide comes back to the handwheel. As I dont have a mill it was a hacksaw and file job. I threaded the sleves and fitted grub screws to them to clamp onto the original dial and collar. A small hole drilled to allow access to the dial tension screw to allow the new dial to be zeroed when ever needed. As a first go I made it out of alluminium and hand punched the numbers after marking it out. Not what you would call perfect but it does the job. I can even guestimate fractions of a thou with the bigger scale where as I was hard pressed to just get 1 thou on the small 1" dials.
That then inspired me to have a go and make a dial for the tail stock for which I had to also allow access to lubricate the back end. I did this in a similar manner to the cross slide, 2 sleves that clamp to the exising parts held in place with grub screws.
Moving right along I then added a metric scale to the tailstock barrel by using the metric change gears and setting up for a 1mm thread pitch and hand turning the lathe for each mark - all 55 of them, again hand stamping the numbers on the shaft.
Next I might have a go at adding a dial to the carriage wheel and then from there work out a way to also include metric scales and pointers.
Any tips and tricks how to do a better job will be greatly appreciated.
Its amazing the things you can do on a lathe beyond turning lots of chips and shavings :)
393344 Index marks added to the chuck
393339 Cross slide dial
393345 Tail stock dial
393340 tail stock barrel metric scale
cheers
TonyB
First up I had to setup an index wheel with 100 graduations, I made this using a CAD program, printed it up and taped it onto the 3 jaw chuck as a template and then using the tool post with a sharp tool on its side I scribed the marks onto the body of the 3 jaw chuck for future reference. I also made up an index wheel that I can clamp behind the chuck, it has multiple sets of graduations from 100 down. The CAD program made that easy enough. Ideally a locking index plate or some other arrangment would be perfect however for this 1st go a simple pointer and holding the chuck each graduation did the job ok although I did fail to hold the chuck tight enough on a couple of the tail stock marks and they are out a bit - I dont think that will be a critical issue for drilling from the tail stock.
I didnt want to make a new threaded bush to provide clearance for a bigger dial so I made a sleve and cut away the section where the cross slide comes back to the handwheel. As I dont have a mill it was a hacksaw and file job. I threaded the sleves and fitted grub screws to them to clamp onto the original dial and collar. A small hole drilled to allow access to the dial tension screw to allow the new dial to be zeroed when ever needed. As a first go I made it out of alluminium and hand punched the numbers after marking it out. Not what you would call perfect but it does the job. I can even guestimate fractions of a thou with the bigger scale where as I was hard pressed to just get 1 thou on the small 1" dials.
That then inspired me to have a go and make a dial for the tail stock for which I had to also allow access to lubricate the back end. I did this in a similar manner to the cross slide, 2 sleves that clamp to the exising parts held in place with grub screws.
Moving right along I then added a metric scale to the tailstock barrel by using the metric change gears and setting up for a 1mm thread pitch and hand turning the lathe for each mark - all 55 of them, again hand stamping the numbers on the shaft.
Next I might have a go at adding a dial to the carriage wheel and then from there work out a way to also include metric scales and pointers.
Any tips and tricks how to do a better job will be greatly appreciated.
Its amazing the things you can do on a lathe beyond turning lots of chips and shavings :)
393344 Index marks added to the chuck
393339 Cross slide dial
393345 Tail stock dial
393340 tail stock barrel metric scale
cheers
TonyB