Thread: Lots of stuff in the mail today and I am stumped

Hello all,

Well, thanks to the great response I received from my first post, I will ask my many newby questions again.

OK, in the mail today I received my H&F vertical milling slide, a small vice and an EBay DRO kit. This is for my AL-336 I have recently bought, starting to realise that the lathe is the cheap part when you start buying suitable tooling.

I am looking at fitting my milling slide to my compound with three M 10 bolts to match the footprint of the mill slide. Looking at my DRO instructions, it seems I will do being a fair bit of drilling and tapping into the lathe for the scales.

Which brings me to my queries.

To tap a drilled hole, do you use a drill bit just under the size of the tapped hole? For example, with my M10 holes, do I first drill with a 9.5mm bit then tap away with the M 10 taps and tap magic? Is there some sort of chart which will point me in the right direction?

Secondly, after reading the DRO instructions, I am convinced it was written by a mad man. I am just baffled.
Is anyone able to give me some tips on installing my scales and DRO please? Is there a site that explains the function of a two axis DRO in understandable English?

Many questions I know, however, I really want to get these jobs done right the first time. I had a look on Google yet nothing I could find was very helpful.

Appreciate your patience with my ignorance


Mike

If you Google tap drill chart you will find hundreds. Here's one example: Machinist Metric ISO Screw Thread Tap - Drill Size Chart - Engineers Edge. I'm a DRO virgin so will let others answer about that.

Rather than me posting links, if you go to google and type in lathe DRO and then pick images you will get 100s of hits on installing them.
I installed my cross slide scale on the tail stock side, where some others think it is best on the chuck side.

Dave

I forgot to add about drilling holes for taps, just minus the pitch off the diameter for metric, so a M6 x 1mm tap would need a 5mm drill and a M10 X 1.5mm tap would need a 8.5mm drill.

Dave

These are 2 of the better ones and done on lathes around your size.
14 X 40 Lathe DRO

Bedair / Meister BC-10L DRO

And Bob on here not long ago installed his
http://www.woodworkforums.com/f65/fi...-lathe-136451/

Dave

Great stuff gents, thank you.

Google Images; just opened up a whole new world for me, excellent stuff.

Mike

DaveJ, i was having a look at this and instantly came to mind how much endless dribble am i giong to hear about the predrilled hole size and you come out with what you did, kind of stuff we were taught on day dot and im a boilermaker not a fitter.short and sweet.its incredible how people become so dependant on charts and are never tought a better way/faster way. only last week i was challenged by a 19 year old, that i couldn't work out if an ore car was square, little bugger had this lazer thingy but, only took me a minute with the old 3,4,5 good old pythagurus.Mr i know everythig never seen it before.

My grandfather and both uncles are boiler makers, and I was taught that from a young age. When I worked as a builder we also used it, so it is widely used.

It's good when you can stump the young know alls with something so simple, LOL. I guess he never listened in math class.

Any tips for imperial? I still use my charts for them.

Mike,
A lot of places will give you tap charts for free, I had some from Blackwoods and recently got some from Smith and Arrow. Most nut and bold places also have them for free.

Dave

tip for imperialists, "switch to metric"

Originally Posted by kraits

tip for imperialists, "switch to metric"

LOL, but you cant help when you are working on imperial jobs. Or if your like me and a bit of a tight ar*e by picking up cheap boxes of imperial nuts/bolts, and use them instead of buying new metric ones.

Dave

i hear you dave and i quite often find myself sayinf things like " 1/2" holes every 25mm or 3' X 500mm.

won't be until the next generation over takes us and imperial measurments will become a thing of the past in australian's psyche.

Imperial units - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

have a look at this and tell me imperial measurements are the way to go, thank goodness for the dude that come out with the metric system.(i think it was jesus) i just can't begin to fathom a fathom, perch rod, rood or chain.

Originally Posted by kraits

only took me a minute with the old 3,4,5 good old pythagurus

That's how the Egyptians used to mark thing out, a piece of rope with knots in it. The 3-4-5 ratio has been known for a very long time.

Originally Posted by kraits

tip for imperialists, "switch to metric"

Or deny reality and use decimal inches, feet and the like. It's fractions vs decimal, and decimal is easier.

Originally Posted by Dropcat

Or deny reality and use decimal inches, feet and the like. It's fractions vs decimal, and decimal is easier.

'Tis funny how long old habits take to die, if they ever do.


When I was a newly started technical instructor in 1972, we were being trained in the new metric system that was about to replace all imperial measures in Australia. We learned things like how, in Australia, "Celsius" would be used rather than 'Centigrade" to avoid confusion with a wood measurement of some sort.

Gee, that was pretty well 40 years ago and here we are still finding it easier to revert to imperial measures for some things but not others. 40 years represents two generations. I wonder how many generations it will take before we actually do adopt the metric system. Maybe that will happen when Bunnings stops selling Whitworth threaded screws.


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