9 X 42 Enco Mill Knee Dial Question...

cathead

cathead

CATWERKS LTD
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Feb 7, 2013
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Today with a little spare time brought me to looking at the dial on the knee of my mill. One rotation of
the knee crank moves the table up slightly less than 100 thousandths. The dial goes from zero to 3.0
in 150 marks on a circumfence or put another way each division is two tenths of something. The marks
have no correlation to inches or millimeters as far as I can tell. There must be more to this than I see
but it is a mystery to me. Tthe X and Y dials are calibrated in thousandths increments and I bought the
mill new so the dial has not been replaced. I'm hoping someone in HM land knows the answer.
  • :sherlock:
  • :dunno:
 
3mm is .1181" so a bit more than the typical .100" you see on most mills. If it was metric the 150 marks would make sense, 50 for each mm. Is your DRO on the z-axis also? With a DRO on the Z, I wouldn't worry about the dial.
 
sanddan said:
3mm is .1181" so a bit more than the typical .100" you see on most mills. If it was metric the 150 marks would make sense, 50 for each mm. Is your DRO on the z-axis also? With a DRO on the Z, I wouldn't worry about the dial.
Click to expand...
I have the X and Y readout and my Z readout is on the Quill. I put a rod from the R8 to the table to take the readings.
The dial doesn't coincide with inches or metric so still don't understand this. I work with inches mostly so would need
a dial with 100 marks per rotation to be useful.
 
I think this is an excuse for a knee readout. iGaging is pretty good in my experience, their 24" model is selling for $51 now on amazon.
 
cathead said:
It measures six threads per inch.
Click to expand...
Sorry, I didn't think my statement through very well. I thought you could measure how that relates to the lift mechanism to calculate the distance per graduation.


Steve Shannon
 
Steve Shannon said:
Sorry, I didn't think my statement through very well. I thought you could measure how that relates to the lift mechanism to calculate the distance per graduation.


Steve Shannon
Click to expand...


Well, I know that one crank revolution is about 0.1 inch and with 150 marks on my useless scale would be
.000666667 inches per division. I'm not sure it is worth it but making a scale with 100 divisions would
be .001 inches per division. Maybe the best option is to shoot a coat of paint on the dial and not refer
to it...
 
cathead said:
I have the X and Y readout and my Z readout is on the Quill. I put a rod from the R8 to the table to take the readings.
The dial doesn't coincide with inches or metric so still don't understand this. I work with inches mostly so would need
a dial with 100 marks per rotation to be useful.
Click to expand...

Try a more accurate way to measure the Z travel. You could set up a dial indicator off the Z dovetail and compare that number to the dial. Even a 1" travel indicator would work as you only need a couple of turns. What graduations do you have on the X and Y dials? That might shed some light on your dilemma.
 
sanddan said:
Try a more accurate way to measure the Z travel. You could set up a dial indicator off the Z dovetail and compare that number to the dial. Even a 1" travel indicator would work as you only need a couple of turns. What graduations do you have on the X and Y dials? That might shed some light on your dilemma.
Click to expand...

Please go back and read all the previous posts on this thread as it was all elucidated previously.
 
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