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My Cowells ME lathe

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raynerd:
Cheers for your tips and information Andy. I have seen your repair you had to do on your website...seems an odd design.

Funnily enough, the none zeroable dials are the only thing that annoy me but the price of changing them out works out at I think near £40 per axis since the lead screws need changing for longer ones. The main lead screw is of course even more than this! Someone out there had modded them and made them zeroable but I think if I attempted that it wouldn't turn out great. I must admit, I seriously have considered DROs but expect most people would be against this on such a fine lathe? I presume even if I was willing to pay for glass dials, I couldn't get any small enough. Any thoughts? - only it certainly would make the fact that the dials can't be zero'd, an irrelevance. However, I don't want to cheapen the lathe!
Chris

caskwith:
That chuck does look very similar to my proxxon chuck. If you would like to borrow my proxxon key for testing and if successful measuring to make your own you are more than welcome to for the cost of postage, i can certainly afford to be without it for a few days.

andyf:
I think you might find DROs would get in the way on such a small lathe, Chris. They would certainly spoil the lathe's looks. It might be possible to mount them to the back of the saddle and cross slide, and to the end of the bed and the RH side of the saddle, so one of them stuck out behind the saddle and the other to the right of the lathe, but they would be very vulnerable to being knocked and in the latter case would need a lot of room.

Zeroable dials could be managed without too much trouble, I reckon. Your lead/feedscrews look as though they project as far as those on my Perris, so you could make up new handwheels and dials to the same design. Basically, the handwheels are like yours, but with a graduated collar fitted over the boss, friction being supplied by a spring and ball bearing in a radial hole in the boss. The handwheel is retained by a grubscrew through the knurled rim of the handwheel. Sketches in my Perris build instructions show them, and there's a scan of those on the files of the Yahoo Cowells group. I'm not sure if you are a member there as "mnbylcr2", but I can always send you a copy if needed.

Musings:
Another less troublesome way might be to make up dial collars to slip over the bosses of your existing handwheels, with an internal annular groove for an O ring to add friction. That wouldn't involve any alteration to your handwheels, but the collar would be unrestrained axially and might catch up on the ends of the cross slide etc, causing the dial to alter itself. If you could bring yourself to turn a corresponding shallow groove around the handwheel boss for the O ring to bed into, that might provide enough axial restraint.

Andy 

Rob.Wilson:
Hi Chris

Just out of interest were did you get your gears hobbed ?

Rob

raynerd:
 I advertised for a set of 32dp cutters on homeworkshop and this very interesting chap said he'd do them for me on his setup if I provide blanks. They look top quality and work great. Cheaper than £165 for the Cowells set!

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