I am making a vertical motion scale for the quill on my mill and for the sake of cheapness I am adapting a 100mm digital calliper. The bar that slides through the measuring head is slightly too long and needs to be shortened. The bar carries the printed circuit scale that is read by the read head and this will need to be cut.

I know that the bars can be cut without damaging the reading system on the linear scales that are used on DRO readouts, but what I am not so sure about is whether you can do the same thing with the scales on callipers. Has anybody cut one of these scale bars from a calliper and does it matter which end is cut?

On a related matter I dismantled the 100mm calliper I bought for this task and was horrified by the state of the inside surfaces that are normally invisible. The inside was filthy with machining muck and pretty crudely machined, while the visible parts were very nicely finished with the jaws mating perfectly. It definitely pays to clean up the inside of these cheap Chinese callipers. After reassembly it felt much smoother in action.

Doug

Thanks for the replies, I can cut the hardened bar with a 1mm thick cutting disk, I was just not sure if the pcb track had some vital element at one end which should not be cut, and if so, what end to avoid cutting.

Doug

I was going to get a proper vertical scale but the cheapest one I could find was going to cost nearly £30. I didn't look at Warco though so perhaps I should have looked further. You are right Vic about easy to read, I will have to suffer having to read the scale sideways, and probably end up thinking I should not have been such a cheapskate and bought a proper vertical scale. Too late now!

Doug