Originally Posted by
metric_taper
I purchased this lathe new, I was age 20, and was the first tool of this size ever purchased by me. I've learned that "JET" was an importer back in the 70's-80's and my lathe was shown manufactured in Taiwan. I don't know what they were thinking as they must have gotten lathes to copy. When it comes to the tail stock, cross, and compound feed screws, they are all Imperial (as well the main screw). The lathe they copied must have been metric, so they looked at an Imperial tape measure and saw 1/8 inch as the increment vs millimeter, so all four feed screws are 0.125 feed per turn. I can't think of any other reason for this odd screw pitch, I guess it could be worse if they used 7/64" pitch.