# Larger diameter compound dial



## 8ntsane (Aug 27, 2012)

The pics show the stock dial sitting on the compound. The factory dial was to small, and all the grads were getting impossible to read.
The replacement dial is 200 grads per rev, so now it will read direct, .005 in on the dial, and .005 off the work piece.

The Dial was in good shape, and only needed the centre hub machined down to fit the Sidney compound. A very easy boring job, and thats done. Then the outer knurled lock collar was made, and finally the disk for the back side of the dial. The disk is aluminum, as thats all I had kickin around, and I still have to scribe the zero mark. it attaches with a set screw in the bottom at 6 o clock.

The dial install worked out well, and nothing on the original compound was alterd at all. The original dial can be re installed in a matter of 2 mins. This is a big improvement over the original dial, and with 200 grads it direct reading. Just a small project done over the weekend.


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## davidh (Aug 27, 2012)

where did you find the dial ?  make it and engrave it yourself ?  nice job, whatever you did.   i too need to re-do my atlas / craftsman.  i got a small chunk of stainless but i guess its never a priority.  as my eyes are going to hell quickly i guess i better do it before its not necessary at all. . .


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## 8ntsane (Aug 27, 2012)

davidh said:


> where did you find the dial ? make it and engrave it yourself ? nice job, whatever you did. i too need to re-do my atlas / craftsman. i got a small chunk of stainless but i guess its never a priority. as my eyes are going to hell quickly i guess i better do it before its not necessary at all. . .



The dial was just a used one I had kicking around for years. It was off a milling machines knee. The dial is as I got it. But the centre hub had the 6 or 7 teeth on the front for the knee crank handle. I just machined the front part off, bored it to fit my compound. The dial was off a 9x42 Italian mill that was heading for the scappers.

My original dial is so worn , to read it is very hard. My lathe in a 1941, so it has a few yrs use on it. My eyes are what they used to be either. I re made a dial for my mill, and just used mild steele. They are bad to do. I used a rotary table with Marv Klotz rotary table progrom to do the grads. The dial was machined in the lathe, and the grads done on the mill. The dial was zeroed out with a 4 jaw mounted on the RT.

Better to re-do old dials when the eyes are getting old.
Larger dials are much easyer to read. As seen in the pics, the original Sidney dial was a really small dia piece, and probably hard to read at the best of times.


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## TRX (Aug 28, 2012)

Sidney?  A friend of mine has one of those.  What a monster!


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## rock_breaker (Sep 1, 2012)

I have two lathes with different sized dials, One is a Clausing 100 MK3 with very small dials- now a real pain to read.  The other is a Grizzly G9592 with approx 2" diameter dials, except for the screwed up markings on the cross feed they are great, don't even need a magnifying glass. 

Hopefully I will make some modified dials for the Clausing also will need some for a rotory table currently under construction. I have a blog somewhere where dials were made on a lathe using the spindle as an indexer the OP did a realy nice job. He used a heavy boring bar to hold the cutting tool, the cross feed to set cutting depth and compound for the linear motion. His work looked like old time factory production.

Ray


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## GK1918 (Sep 1, 2012)

Been on my mind for years Paul.  That rules.  My only question on my 9A & H 10 is what the hell were
they thinking of. What did they see better in 1940?    So my quick tip for people with lathes that look
like a Hudson Terraplane - there is no place for a mag. dial ind. for the compound so on the left side
of the crosslide I C clamped a 2X3/8" flat stock & now a place for Mag Ind. which now indicates the 
tool post, so now for screw theads  .005 is really .005.  Cross slide, I use thread stop never take it
off, like its set and forget.  And then my big lathe I can see those grads without glasses and thats old enough to be the Bends grandfather.  Oh on the set & forget, for facing I just remove the stop screw.
Good job Paul perhaps someday for me.


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## 8ntsane (Sep 1, 2012)

Thanks for the comments guys

I had another dial that was off a Italian machine, and adapted it to the compound of the Sidney. It was a dual dial that was geared to read both im american and metric. I have them on the X&Y of my mill, but they are just to darn busy to read. When I had come across this dial, I liked the plain look it has, and didnt look so out of place.

I dont use the compoud very often, but with the direct read 200 grad dial, it helps preventing me from forgetting to double it up. This lathe has a DRO on it, and the crosslide is set to direct reading. If you have the room for a larger dia dial, its much easyer to read. That old original sitting on the compound in the pics was so small, for such a big machine, what were they thinking?


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## martik777 (Dec 13, 2012)

What diameter is the new dial? Typically, the large dials conversions go from  the original small size of 1" to 2", which would result in exactly the same spacing between graduations if you convert to direct reading. 

ie: at 1" 3.14/100 = .031 spacing; at 2"   6.28/200 = .031

In this case wouldn't it be just as hard to read as the small dial?


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## jgedde (Dec 13, 2012)

8ntsane said:


> The pics show the stock dial sitting on the compound. The factory dial was to small, and all the grads were getting impossible to read.
> The replacement dial is 200 grads per rev, so now it will read direct, .005 in on the dial, and .005 off the work piece.
> 
> The Dial was in good shape, and only needed the centre hub machined down to fit the Sidney compound. A very easy boring job, and thats done. Then the outer knurled lock collar was made, and finally the disk for the back side of the dial. The disk is aluminum, as thats all I had kickin around, and I still have to scribe the zero mark. it attaches with a set screw in the bottom at 6 o clock.
> ...



Nice job!  

I'm having trouble getting my arms around the whole concept of "direct reading" for the compound.  (It's obvious with regard to the cross slide where feed is always radially perpendicular).  But, the compound can be at any angle.   That's why I can't "get it."  I think are Monarch's here at work are also 200 ticks per rev on the compound too but I never could understand why.

John


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