Changed mini lathe to metric

[Doddy]

A very convincingly argued point from Neale... perhaps I'm being blinkered.

[Neale]

I used to use an imperial-only machine. About a year ago I bought an ex-toolroom lathe which is just a little better built - the bed looks like the deck of an aircraft carrier and the whole thing weighs about a ton and a quarter. The "imperial" version of this lathe actually came with dual-system dials but for inexplicable reasons my metric version is metric only. Little bit of a shame as I do a fair bit with old designs with imperial measurements. The saving grace, though, is that the machine came with a DRO already fitted, and I have barely looked at a dial since I started using it. I can take an initial cut, measure with imperial micrometer, punch in the diameter on the DRO in imperial, switch to metric at the push of a button, and start cutting to a final metric dimension. After 40 years without, I hadn't realised just how useful a DRO could be on a lathe until I started using one. However, I doubt that any of the usual commercial DRO kits would comfortably fit in the space available on the Hobbymat machines. A bit of a shame, perhaps, but it shouldn't change the quality or accuracy of the work - it just takes a bit more cut-and-measure and mental arithmetic to get there. Never be wihout a scrap of paper and pencil by the machine to do the odd sum or make notes of dimensions as you go!

It's not a quesion of being blinkered - a Bentley Continental might get you there more quickly, more quietly, and more comfortably but the Ford Escort will get you to the same destination in the end! Although it's difficult to go back to a Ford Escort after driving a Bentley (I would imagine...)