A gift from a fellow BT3Central member, finish added and photo as promised...

[dbhost]

A while back I bought the surplus fence parts from LCHIEN, and as a bonus he tossed in one of his bridge jigs for a dial indicator gauge, which is great for table saw/ router bit height setup, but it came without a finish...

I have not attempted to sand it, just threw a couple of coats of tung oil on it to feed the wood and protect it in my shop. I may sand it a bit to get it smoother, and apply more oil, but here it is,



It's a great little jig, that I have been using the snot out of, and as you may have noted from some of my posts, it has me going through and fine, fine, fine tuning various adjustments on equipment in my shop. Loring's work on this thing is great. I would love to see a write up on how these are made!

I wanted to express my gratitude to Loring (LCHIEN) for going above and beyond in getting the sold parts shipped out quickly, and for tossing in this little bonus. This is really helping me step up my game accuracy wise.

[LCHIEN]

Yeah, Dave forgot to mention one of the best things about it is that it literally follows your blade or bit elevation since the plunger in the dial indicator is lightly spring loaded and very low friction. You can literally watch the dial as you raise and lower your crank or dial on your tool elevation directly to the spot. No more adjust - measure - adjust - measure etc. iterations.

I can maybe make up a short deal on making them. Its not hard everything is 15 degree angles. Actually you can make it totally square with butt joints and it will work equally as well but this looks very elegant with the bevels all around. Getting the dimensions right is a little important. Keeping everything square or accurate is very important for accurate measures.

I noticed you are still using your original dial indicator point. Using this jig is 1000% easier if you replace the round point with a flat faced point, about 1/2 to 5/8" in diameter. Keeping the round point on top dead center of a sharp pointed (like ATB) blade or a round nose router bit is tough - the flat point is so much easier making the exact location over a pointy bit or blade uncritical.

The point unscrews but it is ungodly difficult to find 4-48 thread (all dial indicators use this "standard" thread). The expensive way is to spend 6 or 7 dollars + another 6 or 7 dollars shipping to get one from Enco or other industrial supply, the cheap way is to get a very flat disk ( I used a plug cutter on an old CD), sand off any burrs, and glue it to the end of the round pointer in situ, e.g. place the disk on a very flat table (e.g. jointer surface) with a dab of glue in the center and then put the jig and gauge over it so the spring load of the dial indicator pushes into the glue and this makes the bottom of the disk flat and level with the measuring surface which is the biggest and most important challenge.

and for appearance sake, I set the gauge 180° around so the set screw is in the back of my jig.

[dbhost]

Yeah, I haven't gotten around to digging out the old AOL CD's from the box in the office to sacrifice for that...

I believe I may be able to source 4-48 machine screws to sacrifice to this project. might have to get creative on getting the screw to the disk while not epoxying the screw to the shaft all the while keeping it square... Have to think on that one... If that is the case, I will probably make up a few of them.

My only purpose for this particular dial indicator is woodworking machine setup / adjustment, so sacrificing the tip to a flat tip won't break my heart...

Since you have done this before Loring, do you recommend a particular epoxy for bonding the plastic CD bits to the metal shaft?

Oh, and I know I am funky here, but I kind of dig the look of the set screw on the front...

[russde]

I can maybe make up a short deal on making them.
Yes, please.

I noticed you are still using your original dial indicator point. Using this jig is 1000% easier if you replace the round point with a flat faced point, about 1/2 to 5/8" in diameter.
Pic please?

Thanks in advance.
Russel

[LCHIEN]

Thanks in advance.
Russel

I have an entire PDF article with pictures on how to make these flat contacts, send me your e-mail address in this Forum's private mail message system and I'll send it to you and anyone else. Just mention flat contact article.

[LCHIEN]

A couple of pictures...
Commercial and two DIY flat contacts
Height Jig with BT3000 saw
Height jig w/ router table

Apparently I uploaded the whole PDF file on how to do it. Even better!

[jdon]

Might want to check out this: http://www.amazon.com/T%C3%9CRLEN-Pr...dial+indicator

IMO, good quality for price, and lots of 4-48 threads...

[dbhost]

Hmmm. The question then would be, none of them would have a wide / flat enough face. And some are insanely long for this application... I guess cut them short and epoxy the CD cutoff discs onto them... That should do it...

I somewhat suspect however, that my local Ace Hardware store will have 4-48 flat head machine screws in their specialty hardware bins...

I am going to try snagging a few of the Ace Hardware screws. Online those things must be made of diamonds or something... $1.30 a piece for a screw! They are NUTS.

[jdon]

I somewhat suspect however, that my local Ace Hardware store will have 4-48 flat head machine screws in their specialty hardware bins...

I hope they do, but my local Ace, which has a great specialty connectors section, didn't. Like Loring said in his pdf, 4-48 seems pretty rare. For me, this was the cheapest and quickest source.

[LCHIEN]

I'm willing to put money that Ace does not have anything in 4-48 thread... Its a standard but its very rare.

With free shipping the Amazon deal looks like a quick way to pick up some threaded tips you might adapt. Looks like they have some that are 1/4" dia. flat tips which would probably work.

Precision, particularly perpendicularity, is a bit important... I figure that if a flat disk of 5/8" dia. is used, a 0.5 degree tilt will make a .004" difference from one side to the other, (see my PDF). Just a thought if you are planning on cutting off any longer ones you will need to cut it quite sqaurely to the axis. That's why the self-aligning method of putting a disk flat on the table while lowering the point to it works well.

BTW that tilt include the non-perpendicularity of the drill for the gauge, the non-level of the two legs and the non-perpendicular of the flat to the shaft axis. totalled in both X-and Y directions.

A smaller diameter flat will make the errors less.

[LCHIEN]

These work well, too. $30, but use a 25% off coupon for $22.50ish...
And even Rod Kirby could use it...
Zeroing is much easier and you can't make a mistake reading the number of turns dial...

http://www.harborfreight.com/1-inch-sae-metric-digital-indicator-93295.html

[Black wallnut]

Holy crap Batman! http://www.zorotools.com/g/00093816/...FcRefgodLF8A7Q

[dbhost]

On the phone with Gail, she's looking right now...

Yeah if Ace doesn't have them I might have to order those tips from Amazon...

[dbhost]

I can buy the 4-48 screws, but who the heck needs a box of 100?!

http://www.palmerbolt.com/catalog.asp?prodid=594528&showprevnext=1

There is another online vendor that shows that size, but judging from the business name and their motto, there is NO WAY I am going to do business with them..

http://www.mutualscrew.com/Alloy-Steel-Flat-Head-Socket-Cap-Screws/448-alloy-steel-coarse-thread-flat-head-socket-cap-screws-18945.html

Another one...

http://www.theindustrialdepot.com/flat-head-socket-cap-screws.html

I would have to make a mess of these up, and try to sell them off. What on earth else am I going to do with 100 of these dumb screws?

[LCHIEN]

If you haven't noticed, I've been trying to point out how important it is to keep everything square... I've been down the path you're going before, and it didn't end up well in a theoretical sense or being able to buy the things.