Uses for Magnets

[bobneumann]

At the risk of being slightly off topic: I made my own version of a carriage DRO for my lathe from a stainless 8" digital caliper. One jaw is screwed to a bracket that clamps to the front way. The other jaw hangs out in space when not in use, and attaches very nicely to the carriage with a 13mm neodymium magnet when in use. It's really very snug and tight and reliable, and very easy to attach and detach.

You can see the remnants of JBweld, which I originally had used to attach the magnet to the caliper jaw. But it actually made alignment more difficult, and the magnet sticks to the caliper head so nicely that it's much easier to just leave the magnet on the carriage and stick the caliper head to the magnet.