- Joined
- Jan 1, 2013
- Messages
- 185
) Bill,You missed my capitalized text. Metric threading in "most" lathes will require you to change gears, if you can do it at all. Same with real fine and coarse pitches. Most older American machines were not originally equipped to thread metric. There are however aftermarket transposing change gears that you can use but they don't always make perfect metric threads, and with the case of my Atlas they were a big pain to use. Much more of a pain than my PM1236 is. I am not sure how the older South Bends do with the metric transposing gear sets but you still have to change several gears. It seems to be that the wider range of standard threads and the addition of metric threads in newer lathes you are going to be changing something unless you have a servo motor driven tool room or threading lathe.
Ray, I have always wondered the same thing. You have to be on one side of the fence or the other. Little Machine Shop sells a small hobby lathe that has some sort of changeable lead screw that converts it to metric? I have also seen a accessory thread dial from the UK that reads a metric lead screw and will work on imperial threads but not the other way around. Well at least you have a foot break on the PM1236.
No, I didn't. There was nothing in the OP indicating metric was a concern, so I saw no reason to go there. He was not complaining about the effort required to set up the lathe to cut metric.
Bill
