A little help from my friends...

From: Doc Shipley <doc_at_mdrconsult.com>
Date: Sun May 16 16:59:36 2004

Tony Duell wrote:
>
> There is, I believe, a reason for it. Originally (the design is something
> like 50 years old), it was all Whitworth for the large size bolts and BA
> for the small stuff. That was, of course, typical for British engineering
> at that them.
>
> More recently they found that Whitworth allen-head screws were _much_
> more expensive than the equivalent metric ones. So they went over to
> metric for things like the bolts holding the headstock to the bed, but
> kept Whitworth for the bolts used in the T-slots of the cross-slide, for
> the spindle thread, etc. THat was so all accessories fitted all machines.
> After all, if you buy a lathe, you expect to be able to get bits to fit
> it in 10 or 20 years time (the computer industry could learn a lot from
> this....)

   So *that's* what they were thinkin'! :)

   Thanks, Tony!

   However, since Triumph was firmly in the "nothing from Model A Year X
fits any other year or model" group, I don't think the reasoning carries
across. "Too cheap to retool all at once" comes to mind.


        Doc
Received on Sun May 16 2004 - 16:59:36 BST