Firstly, I should start off by saying i literally have zero experience with lathes and/or machining other than what we did at school and even then they never taught us anything about using them.
I recently purchased an ML7 that was in rather poor condition, and seen serious abuse, but for the most part still has a fairly good bed with little wear that I can tell.
The feedscrews were totally shot, and one handle had been re-attached with a pin put through rather than threaded on.
Dials were sloppy and imperial, so decided my first project on the lathe should be to make some upgrades if nothing else!
Photos are sorta self explanatory, but basically I machined some dials out of stainless which was a very difficult job, having gone through several CCMT diamonds to cut these out!
End result was well worth it however and it now runs on a roller bearing that should stop wear on the face of the casting.
I made my dials similar to other designs people have shared on here, they are yet to be engraved, but have fitted it for testing out.
I made new bronze nuts and got my neighbour to machine the rest of them out on his CNC mill.
The threaded rod is an off the shelf item that costs next to nothing and is a standard 2mm pitch trapezoid threaded rod at 10mm diameter.
Im 99% sure this is what myford solutions are making their feedscrew kits out of, all I had to do was machine the ends down to the correct size and tap the threads.
See photos below:





















And just something to be careful of when machining stainless, you get heaps of steel wool that needs to be kept away from the chuck or this happens!

Edited By Shaun Belcher on 20/09/2021 06:51:37