This is most interesting.? What I find so interesting is the thread dial looks very close to the Dalton one in design.?? Meany thread dials use a straight cut gear and angle the body or the vertical gear and face plate shaft.? I don’t think my gear is any different other than the shape of the gear tooth itself.? What Dalton did and I did also was use a 60 degree included angle cutter much like a woodruff keyway cutter.? In the case of the thread dial gear that engages the lead screw a gear tooth profile is not important at all.? I have seen one a guy made by using only small diameter pins to make the teeth.? What is important is the width of the gear face.? Remember your Lot 5 lathes have a keyway that must be bridged by the width of the tooth.? Lot 2 3 and 4 I have seen were a guy used a clock gear that was made of brass and was very thin. ?So on these three early models the width of the gear is not important at all.

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In the case of this Grizzly thread dial I am going to guess that the angle of the gear shaft is such that the body takes care of the angle and as such would be mounted on a horizontal pin attached to the apron.? I would really like to see one of these to see if it can be used on the Dalton apron.? For sure the gear can and the vertical shaft and dial? face also.? Not historically correct but if it functions correctly and you want to cut threads on your Dalton this would work.? As stated only the mounting to the apron would be the question.? I think if the mounting is way off then a small adapter plate could be made up.? Remember only the height of the mounting bolt is important the distance from the mounting bolt to the lead screw is not nearly as important and could have some variance and still work.?

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Remember that the angle of the thread lead on the lead screw is only a few degrees and as such a straight tooth gear can be mounted were its horizontal to the lead screw and still work just fine.? What is more important is the shape of the gear tooth and that is what Dalton did and I did also as the Dalton and my dial are mounted with the gear horizontal to the lead screw and the tooth shape takes care of the angle.

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Including a short video if it will go as its 3MB and maybe to big a file.? Also a picture of an original thread dial with gear and the ones we made.

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On last thing Dan I have a bunch of pictures showing the process of machining the body blank after it came off the CNC lathe.? Also a number of pictures showing how Ratshooter made the really trick setup in his BP mill to scribe the witness lines as we as how he held the number punch so accurately.? All very simple setups and could be done in a drill press or a mill drill machine.? If you would like to include these in the file section I can send them to you-----if my email would work Grrrrrrr? Need to do a test and see if I can get an email to you Dan as I can’t to Glen.

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Dennis

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I don't? know if this info is useful, but I'll put it out there.

The Grizzly 602 lathe has a 12tpi lead screw if my research is accurate.? They also offer a thread dial.? To be clear, this is not a direct fit and may not even be useable.

That said, while you can buy the whole assembly for $116, you can also buy the individual parts for less and I think many of them have the potential to lend themselves to building a Dalton thread dial.

Here's the parts page:?
The pic labelled "Apron" has a rough drawing of the thread dial.

P0602027 is the gear.? It's a 48 tooth.? ?I ordered one just for giggles since it was cheap.? It looks like it would kinda sorta work, although probably not worth the effort as long as you can get gears from Dennis.? Sorry my pics are awful.??



You can see on the second picture, it doesn't align perfectly perpendicular to my lead screw, but it seems to mesh reasonably well if you were to angle the shaft slightly from vertical.

I'm sure Dennis' gears are a way better match and as long as he makes them available, that's definitely the way to go.??

But the reason for posting is, if you were building a thread dial from scratch, even with Dennis' gear, some of the other bits Grizzly offers might be useful.? I doubt the housing they sell will work without significant modification.? But it still may be easier than building something from scratch.? Likewise the shaft may work, the dial itself, the little arrow might be useful to have.? Might be some cheap shortcuts there that are an alternative to building the whole thing from scratch.? For me, I could probably build the mechanism, (other than the gear), but I don't have a way to etch the dial easily, so that dial would be a nice shortcut.

Also possible there may be other parts from other lathes that may fit better? I don't know a lot about Grizzly's product lines but it appears their parts are generally reasonably priced and the gear came in a couple days, which these days is pretty remarkable.? They may be a source of other parts that can be modified to fit Daltons.

Just food for thought...