Hi
Great to hear from you.
I'm not for sure we are on the same page with the upper and lower designations, but we can work with that! I used the manual's Imperial and the Metric figures, listed on the first inserted table below. The manual had the 24T gear at the gear box (I called it L24 for L=Lower gear) and it had 48TPI at the spindle (I called it U48 for U=Upper). It does not matter what we use in the middle (exchange gear position as long as there is only one gear and not a 120/127 combination exchange gear) as it just transfers the motion between the upper and lower gears. Likewise, I think the middle knobs M1 vs M2 is just a factor of 2x so is no real problem. You seem to have used the opposite top and bottom gear locations for the 24 and 48 gear positions from my table. So I set the spread sheet to L48 and U24 as you used and got some values. Then, my spread sheet predicts A1 to yield 48TIP and B1 to have yielded 72TPI. Close to your findings, but .... Maybe these are as close as you could measure????
If you look at the table inserted again, and the manual figure 3-20, it provides the A4 and B4 thread values to be 10 and 15 respectively. This is a ratio of A4:B4=10:15=2:3. I believe this ratio must be maintained for any of the numbered Knob#s as you go up or down the table. In other words: A1/B1=A2/B2=A3/B3=A4/B4=A5/B5=2/3. Otherwise, the lettered knobs positions changes its gears and would also be needing to change the numbered knobs gears at the same time... a mechanical nightmare.
So the values I got via the spread sheet, using the upper-48 and lower-24 gear settings (your arrangement), gave a TPI ratio of A:B=48:72=2:3. Of course it should as this is the info I used to design it. Your values of 50 and 64 would produce a ratio of 50:64=25:32, which would disagree with the manual's value for the A4:B4 ratio.
What is the explanation for the discrepancy. Possibilities: 1) the wrong number of teeth in either the up or lower gear was used in the cuts, 2) the spread sheet calculations are off, 3) the manual's table is incorrect, or 4) your TPI measurements are off a bit. I am hoping it is the last possibility.
View attachment 441916
I created a second table for you where I used the 24(Top-Spindle) and 48(Bottom-Gear Box) gear locations as you described. It is below and of course each of the TPI values are larger than my earlier table by the gearing ratios changes. (Ie 48TPI/12TPI=4 between the two tables, since the gears have been changed by (48/24)*(48/24)=4 when the upper and lower gears were switched.)
View attachment 441922
It is very difficult to determine when the travel has been exactly 1 inch unless you have a DRO and you count the spindle turns.... or unless you scratch a thread for many inches and count a LOT of turns of the spindle (or a lot of scratches). When I was doing this sort of thing I was amazed at how difficult it is to get feed rates accurate ... and I do have a DRO as well as an electronic spindle turn counter on my machine. To get 1% accuracy you need to have MANY more than 100 threads.
So I propose an experiment that you can use to confirm my table..or not. You can use either the 24(Top-Spindle) and 48(Bottom-Gear Box) gear locations, but it maybe easier to observe if you use the L24 and U48 condition. You indicated that A1 produced 50TPI, for your gear arrangement, but maybe it was 48TPI? Scratch the A1 thread (12TPI or 48TPI depending upon the upper and lower gear choice). Then back the tool out a bit and rewind the spindle so that the tool travels back to near the beginning of the scratch without ever disengaging the saddle feed gears. Put the tool back to the scratch position and change the Knob to B2. Scratch the new thread right over the old one. Since the values on the diagonal of the table are all the same (if my sheet is correctly calculating things) the scratches should be the same for any of the diagonal settings you should get the same scratch spacing on top of one another for any the diagonal knob settings. A1, B2, C3,D4 or D5.
Then just to convince me that my table is correct you could do the same for A1 and B1 and confirm that there are 3 (for B1) scratches per 2 (for A1) scratches. This should be very visible and clear that the phase of the scratches is not changing when you observe this over a distance. It maybe difficult to tell when the TPI is 48 and 72 as the threads are so closely spaced. Hence, the L24 and U48 condition (12TPI) would be easier to observe this ratio.
Likewise you could compare the ratios of A1 to A2. 12TPI to 8TPI. Again 3:2 scratches.
I am not concerned about the metric threads unless we find that the above is not correct. After all the 127T:120T gear is just causing the table's TPI values to be divided by 25.4 mm/inch and inverted to yield mm/T. The A4 table position is 10TPI which is then (25.4/10TPI)=2.54mm/T
Looking forward to hearing about your results.
Dave L.