Removing dial bezel on silver Trav A Dial?
 

After some 30+ years of service, a chip finally found it's way inside
the old silver body Trav a Dial on my lathe. Luckily I have a spare and
can keep going. But I'd like to take this apart to clean it. Unlike the
modern units where the screw heads are epoxied over, this has 4 of the 6
screws exposed. The remaining two are under the dial, and I cannot get
the dial off. I've pried with more force than I really thought wise with
no success. I can see a wave spring of some sort which obviously
provides friction for the bezel. I think it has something to do with
retaining it too, but can't figure out what to do about it.

Anyone know how to get the bezel off without breaking something?

Thanks,

Jon Anderson

In article ,
Jon Anderson wrote:
After some 30+ years of service, a chip finally found it's way inside
the old silver body Trav a Dial on my lathe. Luckily I have a spare and
can keep going. But I'd like to take this apart to clean it. Unlike the
modern units where the screw heads are epoxied over, this has 4 of the 6
screws exposed. The remaining two are under the dial, and I cannot get
the dial off. I've pried with more force than I really thought wise with
no success. I can see a wave spring of some sort which obviously
provides friction for the bezel. I think it has something to do with
retaining it too, but can't figure out what to do about it.

Anyone know how to get the bezel off without breaking something?

Is there a small hole in the side of the bezel? I've taken
apart dial indicators which used such a spring. You have to rotate the
hole until you see the spring closer to the hole, and press in with a
small object (perhaps jeweler's screwdriver or short piece of wire in a
pin vise), then pull the bezel forward a bit, and rotate to find the
next place where the spring is bent outward, and repeat for that one,
then find a third one, after which the bezel will lift forward. This
assumes that the waves are wire bent towards smaller and larger
diameters, instead of front and back flat spring.

I hope that this helps,
DoN.

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Thanks Don,

Looks like a flat spring wound front and back.
I took a black one apart after picking the epoxy out of the screw heads.
On those, the screws are all on the back, so didn't have to remove the
bezel. It was a simple chip that got past the foam gasket, so easy to
fix.
I wrote SWI about repair, no answer yet. But I seem to recall reading on
their site once they don't repair them...

Jon

After asking for instructions on how to get my older Trav A Dial apart
for cleaning, Cliff at SWI was kind enough to pass along the trick:

1. Remove the plastic face, hands and dial face. The plastic face is
pressed on and the dial face has a small amount of
glue holding it down around the edges. ( If you are careful, these parts
can be reused.)
2. The head of two screws will now be visible. Remove these two screws
along with four others visible from the top of the
unit.
3. The unit can now be pried apart to get to the gears.
4. Use a small tooth brush and some alcohol to clean the gears, then
lightly re-grease them.
5. Lightly grease the bearings.
6. Re-assemble.

I was sure the wave spring retained the bezel and had to be removed to
get to the screws. Now all I have to do is figure out how to 'unglue'
the dial face without destroying it....

I didn't mention I had two spare units and so fixing this one wasn't
going to cost them a sale. Did mention it looked 'period' on my older
Clausing Colchester and I wanted to keep it, and since it was 'scrap' as
is, I had nothing to lose.

With so many companies today looking only to sell sell sell, I
appreciated someone offering a bit of advice to help me fix it myself.

Jon