Restoring old lathes, backlash in leadscrews

[irving2008]

Found these guys...http://www.ondrives.com don't recall seeing them mentioned here before

They do 10x2 LH similar price to MD (£11.34 for 1m) and steel nuts in LH for £5.34 each. They advise steel nuts OK for hand operation and given the level of use I dont see this being a problem (comments?). The nut is 17mm sq and 15mm long so would easily fit inside a (brass?) carrier with a locking screw.

Is this a viable option?

[irving2008]

Ok, this is what I plan to do... the top shows the existing screw, very simple, very crude.

The lower two diagrams show the proposed 10x2G replacement, with a pair of 8x16x5 thrust bearings retained by a circlip and 12mm washer inboard and an M8X1.0 nut outboard to adjust endfloat. I'll probably extend the outboard shaft to allow me to fit a zeroable micrometre dial with a backing dial mounted on the bearing block.

Comments?

[John S]

Swap the screw to 20 tpi and use one of the C3 digital displays.
Instant imperial / metric change over, zero at any point and no counting turns ?

[irving2008]

Swap the screw to 20 tpi and use one of the C3 digital displays.
Instant imperial / metric change over, zero at any point and no counting turns ?

£75 is a tad outside my budget John. An adapted 6" vernier off eBay at £10 would be a cheaper DRO!