DRO advice

[john fletcher 1Participant @johnfletcher1]

I’m considering fitting DRO to my lathe, but are really short of space to fit the display unit in, are there alternatives but smaller available, and are the numbers/letter legible. My friends is about 250 x 200 mm which won’t fit in.  John

[jimmy bParticipant @jimmyb]

[John HinkleyParticipant @johnhinkley26699]

John Fletcher 1,

I believe you are referring to the digital display, rather than the scales.  You could follow the TouchDRO route and use either an Android tablet or if the space is really tight, a mobile phone though the screen will obviously be correspondingly smaller.

John

[DiogenesParticipant @diogenes]

John F – I see that Warco have units (for glass/magnetic scales) that look smaller than standard but (uselessly 😉) don’t list the dimensions in the description..

What is the set-up? – it’s possible to support the display on more-or-less any kind of bracket one wishes, it doesn’t have to be integral…

[John HinkleyParticipant @johnhinkley26699]

And to muddy the waters even further, my recently-acquired mini mill from Amadeal has a small display (CXM-3) as illustrated in the picture below. (Obviously not my mill!)

I’ve lifted that image from a pdf that I downloaded from the ‘net when trying to get info on the pin-outs  etc.  No joy.

Subsequent investigations led me to believe that the read heads and magnetic strips on the mill are specific to this installation.  An email or phone call to Amadeal may confirm this.

Given the chance, I would not have purchased the ready-fitted DRO with the mill, but bought a cheapo set of magnetic scale from the far east and fitted them myself with a large display as you describe.  Having said that, they work as accurately as I can machine and for that deserve no criticism.  They just don’t provide all the whizz-bang gizmos that the larger displays or TouchDRO give.

I’ve downloaded the TouchDRO app onto an old Android phone and in my opinion the display is perfectly adequate.

John

 

[Clive FosterParticipant @clivefoster55965]

[Andy StopfordParticipant @andystopford50521]

re. Magnetic scales, I’ve just fitted one to the cross slide of my lathe (I used a glass scale which I already had for the Z-axis). It was a cheapie from Aliexpress:

They claim 5 micron, and that’s seems to be pretty much the case – turning the handwheel rapidly can reduce the accuracy, usually by losing 0.01 to 0.02mm, but slowly moving on, say 0.1, will show it reverting to the correct reading. For me, that’s absolutely fine, and the price is certainly attractive compared to the (presumably) higher quality stuff from Machine-DRO.

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