Importing a Chinese lathe

[savarin]

could you purchase metric square allthread and make a new lead screw?
The half nuts could be formed onto the lead screw using hot delrin
Making new metric dials is easy.
If it needs a keyway running the full length then thats a different story.
Although not in the size or category you need I converted my cross slide to metric M10x1 with 100 division dials and a vernier for ease of use for me.
Not the sort of work one wants to do on a new machine but may be the way to go.
I just cant believe there are no metric lathes available in the last holdout to imperial standards.

 

[AndySomogyi]

If get annoyed enough with the half nut, might have to convert the lead screw, but with a DRO, it's less of an issue.

For larger, enterprise CNC machines, it's all metric everywhere, even US. And manual tools are 100% metric literally everywhere else except US.

In my case, I make custom car parts, and cars I work on are either European or Japanese. But even American cars have been 100% metric since the early 90's. So, I can't believe that I'm the only car guy that wants to make parts.

could you purchase metric square allthread and make a new lead screw?
The half nuts could be formed onto the lead screw using hot delrin
Making new metric dials is easy.
If it needs a keyway running the full length then thats a different story.
Although not in the size or category you need I converted my cross slide to metric M10x1 with 100 division dials and a vernier for ease of use for me.
Not the sort of work one wants to do on a new machine but may be the way to go.
I just cant believe there are no metric lathes available in the last holdout to imperial standards.