I spent a couple of hours yesterday evening rebuilding five ebay dial indicators. One was a desirable 0.0001-reading Lufkin with a 0.200 of travel and three hands. The main problem with it from ebay was that the hands were not zeroed reasonably, and balancing the hairspring preload with the rack engagement was fiddly. But there's nothing like a classic three-hand tenths-reading indicator. Most people use dial test indicators for reading tenths, and those usually have a travel of maybe 8 thousandths. This one is a bit worn on the inside, but seems to repeat to 0.00002 or so.
(Having had this one apart, I really don't know what makes it "shockproof"--the pins are certainly not running under spring-loaded cap jewels the way the balance wheel would be mounted in a shock-resistant watch. But the movement is really jeweled properly.)
Another was an Ames Model 262 0.001-reading indicator that had been dropped and thus had a tooth on the gear between the rack and the central needle pinion that was deformed. I was able to straighten it and now it works perfectly. The hands on this also did not point correctly.
This large Lufkin was the dog of this batch. It was terribly beat up and worn. It repeats to the thousandth, now, but I wouldn't trust it beyond that. The worst feature was that the contact point is broken off, so I'm going to have to try to extract the remains of the screw, or (more likely) make an extension and epoxy it on the top to provide a new place for a tip to screw in. But it's big!
And, finally, this pair of Mitutoyo metric indicators with a 10mm travel. I bought these as a pair (and there are still plenty of these pairs available on ebay) to put into my new Boring Research tramming tool, which was a blem that came without indicators. I don't normally work in metric but for tramming it just doesn't matter. One was sticky but both needed cleaning. They came without contact points, however, and all mine are 4-48 while these are M2.5, so I've ordered a couple of carbide tips from Amazon. I will use this for tramming in my drill press, but mostly for aligning the milling attachment on the lathe when I get that restoration completed. That's why I wanted matched indicators--it just makes life easier with this device.
I have $187 in these, including the tramming jig and two other indicators still on the cleanup pile.
Rick "not buying for daily full-time production use" Denney
