I use my topslide for screwcutting and turning short tapers, ie fairly infrequently. I have actually considered taking it off as unless it is set round a bit (which mine usually is) it is always in the way of the tailstock. More useful would be a saddle stop to limit the travel of the saddle towards the headstock, must get round to making one, but as I've managed without for 50 years it's not high on the list.

It's unusual – almost impractical – to have a DRO scale on a compound since it tends to not be used much and even then only over short distances of less than 1 turn for the most part. There is also the complication of space constraints and the fact that the compound rotates meaning that you'll have to have loops of leads that are prone to snagging.

Most of your turning will be done in the X and Z axis, X being across the ways and Z being along them. There are a myriad of functions that a good DRO will provide with scales on X and Z.

DRO on the carriage travel is all you need. It's what you use for most turning and boring. Compound is usually only used for turning tapers and screwcutting. Feed on the carriage by the handwheel is fine enough for most work. And a handwheel on th eend of the leadscrew gives very fine adjustment indeed, ala Myford.

Take the chuck guard off. They are nanny-state overkill and not at all necessary. Or cut a lump out of it to clear your tool holder. You can also sit your smaller tooling on packing strips in the toolholder if that puts things in the right position. So if using 12mm tooling, a piece of 4mm flat bar underneath it will make it same height as 16mm tooling.

Usual terminology for lathes is the carriage travel left to right is X. Cross slide travel (ie depth of cut) is Y. There is no Z. Z is the vertical movement of the spindle or table on a milling machine, which a lathe does not have. So you had it right first time!

Edited By Hopper on 13/04/2021 04:59:39

The 280 does have a very coarse apron handwheel feed that makes it hard to put on a few thou cut when say facing a job or cutting a spigot to a set length. My topslide is set parallel all the time except when cutting angles and I tend to use that to put on a cut or space out things like cylinder cooling fins along the length of the cylinder as the aprons 0.020" divisions on the handwheel together with it's action make it very hard to hit a set position.

There are some machines where the owner has hollowed out the underside of the topslide and hidden the readout inside, even new factory Myfords can have this. You then ideally want a DRO console that "sums" the carrage and topslid ereadings or you can get a unit that the two plug into and the output goes to a single socket in the consol

Edited By JasonB on 13/04/2021 07:34:50

Having been taught 'Y to the sky' when drawing graphs at school, I find X,Y and Z so confusing when applied to machine tools, I avoid them. Clearer to name the movement, as in NDIY's "long travel" and "cross-travel".

Although Hopper describes the chuck guard as a 'nanny-state overkill' I've put mine back on. This after a ball of swarf caught in the chuck jaws and was flung into my face with enough force to draw blood. A little higher and it would have hit my eye. It may be possible to adjust the guard on the switch axle to avoid the adjuster. Might be possible to move the microswitch :inside the headstock too: I can't remember.

Power feed isn't that scary provided the operator is on the ball. Before taking any cut, manual or powered, it's good practice to check the movement won't foul anything before starting the lathe. Obviously running the carriage into the chuck at high-speed is bad news, but so is a cutter or the tool-post hitting a jaw.

Under power, I note a point just before end of cut and disengage drive as soon as the cutter reaches it. Not difficult because power traverse is fairly slow and it disconnects quickly. Then finish off manually. Long traverse is more likely to end in a crash than cross-traverse. The adjustable stop on the bed is convenient. Best not to bump into it, but provided not overtightened it will slide, which might wake the operator up!

Operators soon learn to pay close attention to what they are doing: it's necessary to achieve good finish and accurate dimensions. The main risk is doing something stupid while concentrating on the cut – head too close to the work for a better view risks a scalping, fingers caught by the jaws etc. Distractions are bad too. Accidents happen disproportionally to Learner Drivers and old-hands. Learners because they don't see the danger and old-hands because they become gung-ho. Good news, Model Engineering is pretty safe – serious accidents are almost unknown. In comparison woodworking is a bloodbath!

Putting DRO on my milling machine transformed it. The benefit on a lathe is less obvious and I've not bothered to put it on my WM280 – yet. Perhaps the best reason for a lathe DRO is mixed metric/imperial working, and I'm almost 100% metric. But even then, I use a caliper or micrometer to turn to a diameter, and stops or visual reference points to control cuts: the dials are used to get close, not to provide absolute accuracy. As always much depends on what the lathe is used for. What works for me may not be good for others.

Great fun learning! Enjoy.

Dave

DRO is less use on a lathe than a milling machine, but I wouldn't be without it now I've had it. For a start it allows metric and imperial without a calculator, then when starting a job just take a skim off the bar, measure its diameter, set the X accordingly, touch the tool on the end, set Z to zero and you're done with measuring unless you're going for very good limits, even then you can get very close before stopping to measure. If you can understand the Chinglish you can tell it which tool is in use and it changes all the values to suit. As I said before I keep the topslide set over so it doesn't clash with the tailstock, so I apply Z with the saddle handwheel. On mine this works well. Perhaps someone needs to design a reduction unit for the WM250

You can just about do this with the manual dials, but you have to concentrate very hard!

I have DRO's on the x and y axis of my lathes, no problem moving the saddle very small amounts even on a 7.5" lathe. That one has a dial on the saddle hand wheel, I used that for lengths before fitting a DRO.

I keep the compound slide (top slide) set at 45 degrees for chamfering, occasionally moving it for screw cutting and taper turning.

John

Hi Jim

You don't actually have a problem wrt DRO. The cross slide, as Duncan says, is mainly to facilitate some of the more complex processes, especially increasing depth of cut on a thread, for which setting it to 30degrees, (or 60 depending on your lathe) is ideal.

If you watch Ade's workshop he is particularly good at explaining the use of the DRO for incremental cuts. I am sure that as you use your machine you will get used to making fine adjustments and getting sub-thou' cut adjustments as a result.

No, the top slide is for that!

Jim

I have just bought a WM290 from Warco which has a factory fitted 2 axis DRO.

I haven’t used it in anger yet, but as Jason says, the carriage hand wheel movement is quite coarse at 0.5 mm per increment on the scale.
I am only a beginner having had a mini lathe for only a couple of years, but fitted a diy dro system to that using 4 cheap digital calipers, a homemade Arduino interface and the TouchDRO app on a tablet.

I have just ordered an extra linear scale from Warco to fit to the compound **LINK**

I am going to make a combiner similar to this one **LINK** to add the new compound scale to the existing z axis.

I suppose it depends on your level of experience and what you want to make, but I find it difficult to take accurate cuts with just the carriage hand wheel and use the compound.

Stuart

Edited By Stuart Smith 5 on 13/04/2021 17:00:15

Jim, the part you have labelled as 'What's this?' is the attachment for a guard. You can remove this. The guard (there was one on my WM 29V0) when fitted does nothing useful, though I think it is supposed to keep chips and swarf from being thrown towards the operator