My Lathe Homepage

Having made the DRO for the Mill/Drill, I looked at the lathe and said to myself, why
not? After all, the dials on the cross slide were bigger than the ones on my South
Bend; however they wern't that big and my ole eyes have trouble seeing the small
divisions. Also, there is no measurement scale on the bed axis and there are times
one would be handy (especially when trying to layout different areas of the turning).
The initial plan was to use the same cable technology for both the cross slide and
carriage, but then I thought, there is not enough room for a cable system on the
cross slide and it sure would collect swarf. I then thought about mounting it on the
back of the slide but realized the swarf cover would mean moving the encoder way
back on an overhang. Bad move. So I then looked at replacing the cross slide
bushing and bearing set. I then removed the old one and made measurements and
realized I needed to shorten the bushing set to allow the ball handle sufficient
clearance. Also to make the project more "Professional", I decided to use gun blue
to finish the pieces.

Here is the bushing set (without the 1/2"x5/8" oilite
bearings inserted) and the spacer to hold the
encoder wheel. There is a hole (1/8") that is drilled
in the 12 o'clock position when installed on the
lathe for the purpose of tightening the bushing and
oiling them. The knurled piece and the spacer are
also used to hold the encoder wheel with the
encoder block mounted on the backing plate shown
in the center.

This shows the fixture I used to bore out the encoder
wheel. It is two pieces of steel bolted together. First,
a hole was bored that was a sliding fit for the
backing ring on the original code wheel and then it
was counter bored to 5/8" to fit the spacer above to
a point just past the top piece of steel. Then the
wheel clamped in the fixture and the boring bar was
run BACKWARDS to shear the thin metal code wheel.
It was felt running the bar forwards would tear the
wheel!

Here are all the remaining pieces parts for the DRO
including the "tires" for the cable setup and the
mounts for the way and cross slide. The angle iron
piece is a template to make the holes in the back of
the cross slide and is sized the same as the ATLAS
Taper attachment (if I am lucky enough to ever find
one:-{(

This is a close up of the plate holding the idler
wheels on the back of the cross slide. Two holes had
to be bored to clear the gib adjustment screws
which would interfere with the idler plate if they had
not been drilled. On retrospect, I should have made
the holes bigger to allow a socket to be placed on
the gib nuts if I need to adjust the gib:-{(

A shot of the support at the head stock end.

Cable was strung and then tightened by placing a
block between the carriage and the tail stock block
and making the cable tight and then setting the two
1/4-20 set screws.

To switch between the Lathe and the Mill/Drill, the
cables were terminated with DB25 connectors and
run to an A-B switchbox.

Each of the wires was run to a separate connection
on the connector. This included the shield wires
from each encoder. The shields are all tied together
in a single point ground in the computer to avoid
having ground loops.