Cross Slide dial Debacle

[cathead]

For some odd reason, after after owning my Springfield lathe for 20 years, I took issue with the fact that someone had
welded the advance indicator dial to the crank and had thrown away the knurled bolt. It's nice to have two lathes
as I took the crank handle off the Springfield and put in the Monarch and machined the welds to separate the crank
wheel from the indicator dial. The crank looked rough so I did some die grinding to make it halfway presentable.
Then I made a knurled bolt 1/4 x 20 to fit on the dial. So far so good. Now the problem is that the dial ring binds in places and
is a constance source of aggravation. It seems the dial ring is not of uniform thickness something not just right. The
parts had been welded on so that is no big surprise. Also, the dial could be easier to read so I am considering
making another one in grander scale probably. I figured that if I make this post and announce that I am going to
rework the dial, I will get right on it and make another post of a new dial. Hopefully so.

Here's a photo of how it looks after I worked on it this morning:

 

[4ssss]

There's a member here that makes new dials for lathes and he wrote up a post on how to do it with pics. You may find it if you search, or someone else can chime in.

 

[jcp]

Take a look here.....https://www.hobby-machinist.com/threads/making-graduated-dials.60209/

 

[cathead]

I plan to use a rotary table mounted vertically on the vertical mill using a 4 jaw chuck. Also the dial is kind of small
so will make one of bigger diameter. The present dial measures radius with 125 graduations but one with 250
graduations would read diameter so will try for that. The cutter will be mounted in the mill head and I will use my DRO
to control the length of the scribes. Another feature that I will incorporate is cross feed stop for
threading, very handy if one does much threading.



Thanks for the replies gentlemen. Every little bit helps. (I'm trying to transform a sow's earinto s silk purse).

 

[Ray C]

Solution: Find the guy who welded the dial in the first place and slap him upside the head.

Ray

 

[jcp]

I use a cross slide stop when doing threading also. Like 'um.

 

[cathead]

This debacle has now reached critical mass and melting down into a QUAGMIRE.
As it turns out none of my dividing plates are going to give me the required 250 indexing divisions
needed. OK, I can deal with a quagmire if I have to. It looks like the least number of holes needed
in the indexing plate is100 so one would advance 36 holes each move to make that work. I just came in
for breakfast and have 52 holes drilled in the index plate so if I am lucky this project will be nearing
completion hopefully by lunch time.

With any luck, this project will not achieve QUANDARY status!!!!


In reality it could even become a PREDICAMENT I suppose........

 

[cathead]

Well, it didn't turn out as bad as my earlier post indicated. I added a circle of 100 holes to the index plate.
After that it was pretty straight forward and the dial ended up with 250 marks. That way if you advance
the cross feed screw 1 mark, .001 inch would be removed from the diameter of a part.

I still need to make another ring for the cross reference mark but that will be a project for tomorrow I think

Here's a couple photos:








The marks show up OK but maybe there is a way to improve it. I'm thinking maybe I could heat it up
and quench it in oil, then sand off the black.............

 

[f350ca]

I had to do almost the exact same series of operations to make a 125 division dial, I made a plate with 50 holes. But the 15 hole plate made the 50 hole one.
I tried using cold blueing on the dial then polished the body leaving the lines and numbers dark. Worked like a charm and has stood up well for a year or so on the shaper down feed,

Greg

 

[benmychree]

That is the beauty of the universal dividing head, you do not need high number plates, it is done by differential indexing, where the spindle is geared to rotate the index plate. That is how prime numbers are divided, such as 127 for metric transposing gears.