# Compound dial questions



## Ski (Jan 18, 2015)

My 13 has some slop in the dial on the compound. I am going to play with it this morning but I seem to remember seeing a thread somewhere that addressed this. If someone remembers this as well, could you point me in the right direction? It seems that it is not all in the compound feed screw/nut although there is some backlash there. I searched around but no luck. Ski


----------



## Ski (Jan 18, 2015)

After making a wrench to tighten up the slotted nut. I made sure it was tight and used feeler gauge to measure the slop. It is about .008 on the compound and .005 on the cross. Using a feeler gauge as a temp shim, I can get almost all backlash out of the screws. The dials do not get tight while doing this. I think the article I saw was about trimming part of the screws to minimize the play. I am going to cut some shim stock and see what I end up with.


----------



## Ranger (Jan 18, 2015)

I have been wondering about how to do this as well ,
my compound has a new nut and screw and still has
.020" back lash in the whole thing
please let us know how yours works out
and exactly how you did it!


----------



## martik777 (Jan 18, 2015)

This helped with mine

http://www.machinistweb.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1233


----------



## Ski (Jan 18, 2015)

That is the one I saw Martic. I didn't have a screw driver that I wanted to sacrifice that was wide enough for the tool but made a notched washer work well enough.I'll post the end result. Thanks , Chris


----------



## Mark_f (Jan 18, 2015)

I have this procedure downloaded and have done both my compound and cross slide. (It was written by Jim B. ... aka engineer1). It is easy to do and I replaced the nuts at the same time. Got my back lash down to about .003"

I made the tool for the nut from a washer. Can't get no cheaper than that.

Mark




martik777 said:


> This helped with mine
> 
> http://www.machinistweb.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1233


----------



## benmychree (Jan 19, 2015)

Backlash in machine tool screws / dials is a fact of life; In the real world, it is not something to worry about; just get used to dealing with it, unless it is excessive, like a quarter turn of the crank; I've worked on machines worse than that, and it is not that big of a thing.  It can be bothersome on such as a cross feed when threading, where it delays the pull out of the tool, but for turning, it makes no difference.


----------



## Mark_f (Jan 19, 2015)

benmychree said:


> Backlash in machine tool screws / dials is a fact of life; In the real world, it is not something to worry about; just get used to dealing with it, unless it is excessive, like a quarter turn of the crank; I've worked on machines worse than that, and it is not that big of a thing.  It can be bothersome on such as a cross feed when threading, where it delays the pull out of the tool, but for turning, it makes no difference.



You are very correct, but when back lash is excessive, there is no reason to live with it when it can be fixed. Backlash cannot be eliminated and we have to learn to deal with a little bit of it. It is so much better to have a few thousandths than 30 or 40 thousandths, but that is just my opinion.)


----------



## Ski (Jan 19, 2015)

Thanks guys, I appreciate the input. Consider that I am nothing more than a hobbiest, at best. This is a new machine to me and I have just started using it after fixing it up. I tend to try to improve what I have if I can. Hence the interest and even more so the questions I tend to ask. I learned some info about the type of dials this has today from a friend. These are diameter/direct reading which is new since my 10L was not. That lathe was .001 on the dial equaled 002 on the work piece. I have ,according to the dials about .006 backlash on the compound and .022 on the cross. That was 12 grads on the compound and 45 on the cross. There are 200 graduations on the compound and 250 on the cross. I understand the graduations to be .0005. That said I may understand wrong. I frequently do , so feel free to enlighten me. I played with some shimstock and I can decrease it on both but I can live with the compound play. I think a new crossfeed nut would do me better. My 10L had more backlash and a nut took care of some but not all of it. For now that is the one I am going to try to improve a bit. I will have to check into the cost of a crossfeed nut that will work on this.  I think it can be brought down to .017 or so refitting the dial on the cross. It will have to wait awhile though as I have a few projects I am in the middle of. Thanks !


----------

