Toms Wheels
Titanium
- Joined
- Dec 30, 2005
- Location
- Jersey Shore
A while back I asked if anyone had shortened a DRO scale, without success, so heres a story of what I did.
A seller on Ebay with little feedback was selling a complete Mill setup C-80 Newall DRO. I bought it arrived complete and undamaged. This is for my 10EE not the BP, so one scale would need to be shortened to use on the crosslide.
About this time I see on Ebay an odd C-80 setup, all in a large plastic case, for sure a Demo setup, and one of those scales was a Microsyn scale that would fit perfectly on the 10EE crosslide. For less than the price of a Microsyn scale I got a complete setup.
The installation on the lathe went fine, but now I have a 13" scale and a useless 10" scale as it has a nice 2" slot milled in the tube to show the balls inside. From one of the members here I bought a 48" scale.
The scale of a Newall is a SS tube filled with ball bearings, the tube is plugged on each end with fittings that are staked in. So I have one tube for practice, and one for the money. Chucking up the tube in the lathe, it was turned down until it was about .010 thick, then a bolt was threaded into the fitting with a spacer and a washer just pulled the fitting out. As can be seen in the photo.
This is the fitting with setscrew that is used to adjust the scale after assembly
After shortening the scale it was staked back into place. Surprisingly a 8oz hammer and a 3/32 drift produced the same depth dimple as the factory marks. These are the factory dimples.
These are mine.
Before the good scale was cut, it was chucked into the lathe and fitted with a reader head attached to the tool post. Over a 6" lenght the varience on the lathe to chuck mounted scale was .0014" , thats more than I expected. Assuming the new lathe scale was closer to correct, than a used scale, I thought I could get better that that. After assembling the scale it did not take long to adjust the altered scale to within .0002 of the lathe scale over 6".
The Newall is a nice DRO, and getting it cheap makes it better.
A seller on Ebay with little feedback was selling a complete Mill setup C-80 Newall DRO. I bought it arrived complete and undamaged. This is for my 10EE not the BP, so one scale would need to be shortened to use on the crosslide.
About this time I see on Ebay an odd C-80 setup, all in a large plastic case, for sure a Demo setup, and one of those scales was a Microsyn scale that would fit perfectly on the 10EE crosslide. For less than the price of a Microsyn scale I got a complete setup.
The installation on the lathe went fine, but now I have a 13" scale and a useless 10" scale as it has a nice 2" slot milled in the tube to show the balls inside. From one of the members here I bought a 48" scale.
The scale of a Newall is a SS tube filled with ball bearings, the tube is plugged on each end with fittings that are staked in. So I have one tube for practice, and one for the money. Chucking up the tube in the lathe, it was turned down until it was about .010 thick, then a bolt was threaded into the fitting with a spacer and a washer just pulled the fitting out. As can be seen in the photo.
This is the fitting with setscrew that is used to adjust the scale after assembly
After shortening the scale it was staked back into place. Surprisingly a 8oz hammer and a 3/32 drift produced the same depth dimple as the factory marks. These are the factory dimples.
These are mine.
Before the good scale was cut, it was chucked into the lathe and fitted with a reader head attached to the tool post. Over a 6" lenght the varience on the lathe to chuck mounted scale was .0014" , thats more than I expected. Assuming the new lathe scale was closer to correct, than a used scale, I thought I could get better that that. After assembling the scale it did not take long to adjust the altered scale to within .0002 of the lathe scale over 6".
The Newall is a nice DRO, and getting it cheap makes it better.