who has gone metric?

I work for a swiss company and everything there is metric. When I go home to my shop everything is standard. I rather use standard because thats what I'm used to.
 
I see this is a little older thread but I am still wondering if anyone has gone over to metric enought to buy a lathe setup for metric. I am planning on stepping up from a cheap hobby Asian lathe to a better Asain lathe, the PM 1236, and have been reading the forums here and other sites for about a month now and came across a few posters here that got a PM1236 that was set up metric from the start. The threading charts and all. I didn't even know that was an option. I use my lathe now for 95% metric because I mainly work on Jap and KTM bikes especially metric suspension components. I taked to Ray C about this and have decided to have him order me a metric machine. I hope I dont regret it...
 
Seabee-ken said:
I see this is a little older thread but I am still wondering if anyone has gone over to metric enought to buy a lathe setup for metric. I am planning on stepping up from a cheap hobby Asian lathe to a better Asain lathe, the PM 1236, and have been reading the forums here and other sites for about a month now and came across a few posters here that got a PM1236 that was set up metric from the start. The threading charts and all. I didn't even know that was an option. I use my lathe now for 95% metric because I mainly work on Jap and KTM bikes especially metric suspension components. I taked to Ray C about this and have decided to have him order me a metric machine. I hope I dont regret it...
Click to expand...

Seabee... LOL, you're killing me... We get about 1-2 requests for metric machines a year. The last shipment was supposed to have just one but that somehow got translated to 1 cargo container. :banghead:


Anyhow, the vast majority of those same machines are sold in Europe and produced as metric. The folks there of course do more metric turning than US threads so that's how they need/want the machines. Anyhow, we have the next batches of machines of 1236's coming in soon and more batches due to arrive in late July and another in August. I'm checking to see if a metric unit can make one of those two last shipments...


BTW: Matt only sells in the US and Canada because of the UL/CSA certification requirements but, the factory that produces them (which Matt has been doing business with for 11 years) makes a lot of equipment sold outside of the US...

The only machines that I know-of that are truly universal (US/Metric) would be a CNC-type...


Ray
 
Seabee-ken said:
I see this is a little older thread but I am still wondering if anyone has gone over to metric enought to buy a lathe setup for metric. I am planning on stepping up from a cheap hobby Asian lathe to a better Asain lathe, the PM 1236, and have been reading the forums here and other sites for about a month now and came across a few posters here that got a PM1236 that was set up metric from the start. The threading charts and all. I didn't even know that was an option. I use my lathe now for 95% metric because I mainly work on Jap and KTM bikes especially metric suspension components. I taked to Ray C about this and have decided to have him order me a metric machine. I hope I dont regret it...
Click to expand...

Back before I upgraded to a longer bed, I converted the leadscrew on my lathe to metric. I can't say it really changed my life. As I am only building for myself, I can choose whatever I want for thread pitches. I bought an extra gear that lets me get a better approximation of metric threads and find myself doing more threads with taps and dies anyway.

I don't think you will regret it. If you are doing most of your work in metric, it should make your life easier in the long run. You can still do SAE threads but they will be the ones that are off by a tiny percentage rather than the metric ones. I think you would have to be turning a really long screw before the error accumulates to something that would even be noticeable.
 
Back in the garage tonight using a die to cut some more metric threads. Metric machine will be nice. I did make a simple tool that holds a metric die in the tail stock so I can get threads started straighter. I see a lot of tools made to hold tools on this site.

My little hiccup in my decision is gone now Ray and am still wanting the metric one. Thanks for the help yesterday.
 
I like both but use metric every chance I get. I just like it better.
It makes more sense to me. I think it's a better system.
 
I do a lot of threading on my lathe. Since it has an 8tpi lead screw I stay imperial as much as possible. if I needed to switch to metric I would look to change out my lead screw, etc. for a metric setup.
Dave
 
I was fortunate to go through the transition of imperial to metric in South Africa in the sixtees . The biggest problem at the time was converting the monetary system from pounds,shillings and pence to metric rands and cents. There was 12 pennies to a shilling and 24 shillings to a pound as it was in Britain . Now the 12pennies had to converted to 10cents and 10 shillings to 1 rand,2 rand to the pound. We thought we were being robbed , and I am sure the storekeepers were taking advantage of the system. However the transsition went somehow smooth as I remembered as I was still in school. The older folks were not impressed. In my working life I worked in an automotive engine reconditioning shop and every journeyman had a complete set of metric and imperial mics. You don't want to grind an American crankshaft or block using calculators as this can lead to failures due to the close tolerances neccesary. Today 95 percent of the work is in metric but we still use our imperial mics etc on imperial engines. We never convert the specs.
 
In my country we were born, raised and live in metric exept the plummers! They were born, raised and live in inches.
Its funny! I just realised that when you need to order a pipe you have to say 1/2 inch 3/4 inch etc. It sounds natural here to associate pipe sizes in inches.
On the other hand when I lived in the UK I noticed that they had exactly the opposite system. Everything was measured in inches and miles exept plumming! This was in metric!

What can I say! Funny world.

Petros
 
I have been finding that more and more of my layouts have both imperial and metric dimensions on them. Since I have added DRO's to my mill and lathe this has not been a problem since I can switch the display on the fly. Boring for metric bearings is a pleasure with a DRO. Bob
 
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