- Joined
- Jun 13, 2015
- Messages
- 97
I've had my lathe for a couple years now and have always had a DRO on it and never paid much attention to the dial increments. Today my DRO was acting up and I had to revert to using the dial markings. Well, the cross feed dial increments don't make any sense to me. I've uploaded a picture of the dial so you can (hopefully) see what I mean.
If I take the backlash out and move the dial in 1 small line, it moves less than 0.001". I put a dial indicator on and tried to make sense of how much it moves but for the life of me can't see any sort of correlation with the amount the dial is turned.
If I turn the dial to the 5th small line the dial indicator moves +/- 0.003". If I turn it into the 1, it moves 0.006" and to the 2 it moves 0.012". On the number 3 it moves 0.019" Basically, every 10 small notches moves the slide in 0.006" - 0.007". If I make 1 complete rotation of the dial, 0 back to 0, it moves the dial indicator 0.100". There are 156 small lines (157 to get back to 0) on the dial in total. If you do the math, every small line moves the slide 0.0006369".
I contacted PM and they are telling me this should be the correct dial for my lathe. I think this dial is not correct for my lathe but I've been wrong before.
Does any one else have or had any issues with their cross slide dials? I thought I had read on here someplace that someone did have the wrong dial on theirs but can't seem to find the thread/post. If you did have an issue, what dial did you replace it with so I can do the same. My DRO is working properly again but if I ever had to revert to using the dial indicator again, I'd like to have it working properly.
Thanks
If I take the backlash out and move the dial in 1 small line, it moves less than 0.001". I put a dial indicator on and tried to make sense of how much it moves but for the life of me can't see any sort of correlation with the amount the dial is turned.
If I turn the dial to the 5th small line the dial indicator moves +/- 0.003". If I turn it into the 1, it moves 0.006" and to the 2 it moves 0.012". On the number 3 it moves 0.019" Basically, every 10 small notches moves the slide in 0.006" - 0.007". If I make 1 complete rotation of the dial, 0 back to 0, it moves the dial indicator 0.100". There are 156 small lines (157 to get back to 0) on the dial in total. If you do the math, every small line moves the slide 0.0006369".
I contacted PM and they are telling me this should be the correct dial for my lathe. I think this dial is not correct for my lathe but I've been wrong before.
Does any one else have or had any issues with their cross slide dials? I thought I had read on here someplace that someone did have the wrong dial on theirs but can't seem to find the thread/post. If you did have an issue, what dial did you replace it with so I can do the same. My DRO is working properly again but if I ever had to revert to using the dial indicator again, I'd like to have it working properly.
Thanks