I'm surprised I can't find anything online about this but it appears to me that, once you have fitted DROs to an Sieg C3 based lathe, it's impossible to take cuts shallower than about 40 degrees.
With the compund DRO towards the front, it clashes with the cross slide DRO and with it towards the rear, it clashes with the cross-slide itself.
A somewhat significant design flaw I would have said.
I wonder if AET would send me the parts to retun it to vernier dial operation...
Adrian.
Adrian,
At present AET does not do a kit to convert back to vernier dial. AET may do so at some future date, but probably not for the reason you suggested.
There are both benefits and disadvantages of DRO. May be the reason you cannot find anything online about the shallower cuts issue may be because it is an issue for you but not for others. I have to admit that this is the first time I am reading about it. May be, if this is an issue, others have accepted it as a limitation, or simply dont use the machine in the same manner as you, or they simply dont know about it. There are thousands of members on the mini-lathe forums worldwide, and if this really was an issue, I am sure that this would have come out years ago!.
So, based on the above observations, in my opinion, if it is really an issue, I would refer to it as a limitation. Calling it a "significant design flaw" may be stretching it a bit.
Ketan at ARC.
Dave Fenner drew attention to this and the lack of clearance between the DRO and a chuck held in the tailstock (for which he gave a modification involving installing the compound DRO at an angle, - I wonder if also installing the cross slide DRO at a comparable angle would allow shallower cuts as they could be moved closer together) both in his articles on the Mini-lathe for Model Engineer's Workshop and in chapter 10 particularly p.118-121 of his book "The Mini-Lathe" derived from those articles. For anyone getting such a lathe, I would highly recommend that book, it is no.43 in the Workshop Practice Series published by Special Interest Model Books ISBN 978-185486-254-9 eg see:
I totally agree, one of the joys of having a mini-lathe is discovering ways of getting around limitations which are of necessity inherent in a small lathe available at a low price.
Alan
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