I would say a good chunk of the machine shops I deal with have a few imperial machines. Most have been converted to DRO though.
The 50-60s lathes are rather substantial.
Every tool room I frequented in the auto industry had imperial machines so when you went in with a drawing you needed to already know what the tolerances were in thou’ otherwise you’d get nowhere with the guys in there.
Later on I quite enjoyed sending cocky apprentices in there totally unprepared for a proper schooling 
My closest colleague in the US was a Texan whose grandfather ran a lumber yard over in the north-west of the state somewhere. He had had summer jobs with his granddad and he told me that if you mentioned millimetres to the old guys who worked there they wouldn’t talk to you for a week. They believed, some of them 100% genuinely, that the metric system was purely and simply a communist plot to undermine the US way of life.
VB
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New motor added
Nearly there
CNC machine dominance beckons!
Helped @Turningjapanese recently with a couple of projects.
He wanted to fit a nice new 12inch Ikeda to his Denon DP80 Turntable and didn’t have a spare armboard. So he brought it all to me to take a look at. The plinth was never meant to take a 12 inch tonearm, but I managed to get it to fit by moving one of the plinths feet and routing out some of the plinth from below the arm for the cable.
I recessed a nice Ortofon sprit level into the armboard to disguise the old roughly cut hole which was for a Rega arm and remachined the mounting hole for the Ikeda with a recess underneath to fit the huge solid ring that fastens the tonearm to the plinth.
I must say the Ikeda tonearm is beautifully made and I thought the whole thing tuned out well.
Before picture
Now the after pictures.
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How was it sounding? I loved the Ikeda when I borrowed one, probably the nicest sounding arm I’ve heard.
Fuck, you have skills 
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Ikeda was a beauty it sounds great and is an absolute joy to use. It is a tonearm I would consider pushing the boat out for.
I had to add a 3G shim to get the Hana SL to balance properly but once set up it actually sounded great and matched the arm surprisingly well considering how light it is.
It is definitely one of the nicest tonearms I’ve come across.
What protractor & mounting distance did you go for?
The next job I did for him was to re-house his SUT. It came in a wooden box with a copper top and bottom and looked a bit worse for wear. He also had a problem with it humming and interference.
So I used the copper top and bottom and built a corian box for it all to live in. Then I lined the box with copper tape to help with the hum and screwded it all together with some nice brass screws.
@Turningjapanese reports it is now silent.
No before pictures this time but this is what it turned out like.
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I fitted it at 295mm spindle to pivot and set cart at Lofgren. Worked pretty good.
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Spirit level was a cunning move.
Looks great.
Many thanks to Tim for the fab work on both plinth and SUT, I am such a clutz so couldn’t even think about trying it myself and Tim was fab with the ideas on what we could do as well as the execution of the final plan
and it looks and sounds great too:)
bit of tweaking to do still in the system as its currently not as sharp in the imaging department as the FR64s was, but I think that is my set up post travel as it was sounding great at Tim’s when I picked it up
Darren
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Wow, great job
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Are these horns for sale? How do I get my hands on a set of large JMLC’s!
Welcome to the forum!
There’s Auto Tech, but you will need to deal with Greg if you’re in the UK…
What is your project?
I am familiar with autotech, nice stuff but shipping to america is way too much. I got a pair of 350hz jmlc from Germany and the shipping was less than 70 dollars. These are made from fiber glass…wood might be more preferable…sourcing these horns has been almost impossible, I found the German guy on ebay. Shipping from auto tech cost more than the product itself =(
There’s Azurahorn in Australia, but that’s no closer to you! Fibre glass again.
@simonms Might be able to help with wooden JMLCs…
1 Like