Lathe Carriage Dial Indicator

[mklotz]

In the past, I've used my very similar arrangement to move the carriage left and right about some feature of the workpiece that serves as an origin.

When I do this I first set the DI to the middle of its (2") range. To facilitate setting it, I made a setting gage that consists of a 1" long aluminum rod with a deep groove down its entire length. The groove is wide enough to allow the gage to slip over the DI rod.

The procedure goes like this...

Pull DI rod far enough to slip gage over the "back end" of the rod between the rod cap and the top of the DI dial. This holds the DI rod at 1" compression, the middle of its range.

With the carriage positioned at the reference feature, move the DI up until it just touches the carriage.

Remove the setting gage and you're ready to go.


I set the rotating dial so zero is at the 12 o'clock position as seen by the operator. This way the needle tells me which way to move the carriage to return to the reference. If the needle is to the left of zero, I need to move the carriage to the right to get the needle to move right to the zero.