Dividing Head Question Bonanza

Ok, never mind.

For some strange reason, after I made all these posts, and downloaded the manual it's working now!

I have no clue why it wasn't working before. I tried it about 5 or 6 times and it was over-wrapping every time. Then I made these posts, downloaded the manual, and went back and tried it again and it came out perfect.

It probably knows that I read the manual now and has decided to behave itself.

Or it could be me. Who knows?
 
I hope it's ok to express my excitement in this "beginner's" forum.

I'm not exactly a beginner as I used to be a machinist years ago. And I have owned several lathes and milling machines over the course of decades. Unfortunately I no longer have those big machines (i.e. Bridgeport mill, South Bend lathe, etc.). Now I just have a small Chinese 3-in-2 lathe/mill/drill.
I've had this dividing head for years and never really used it much. So I'm just getting it out to see what I've been missing. This is all fascinating stuff.

I'm learning a lot about how to use this dividing head pretty quickly. By the way, I found the problem I was having earlier. There is a small sheet-metal spring clip that holds the sector arms in place, and that spring clip was catching on the crank arm and moving the sector arms and that was what was throwing me off. I'll have to fix this. Currently I've just been holding the sector arms in place when measuring the hole count.

Anyway, I just noticed that in the manual to divide something into 3 equal parts they suggest using a 33 hole circle plate and using 13 turns plus 11/33. Or 11 more holes. But I see that there are many plates that can be used for a division of 3 equal parts.

For example:

15 hole circle plate = 13 turns plus 5
18 hole circle plate = 13 turns plus 6
21 hole circle plate = 13 turns plus 7
27 hole circle plate = 13 turns plus 9

And then finally as the manual suggests:

33 hole circle plate = 13 turns plus 11.

And you can even use

39 hole plate = 13 turns plus 13

So there are many more options than the manual suggests. That's good to know if you want to divide by 3 you can do it with any of the three plates that just happens to be on the divider at the time. Lots of choices. This is apparently true for quite a lot of other divisions as well.

I'm catching on quick.

Now I just need to figure out other interesting things to do with a divider besides just making gears.
 
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