WM16B DRO – 2 or 3 axis?

[BluesbreakerParticipant @bluesbreaker]

Hi all – first post though I have been lurking round here for a while!

I'm fairly new to the ME hobby, and have recently acquired a Warco WM16B milling machine.

I'm considering fitting a DRO kit from M-DRO – given that the mill already has an inbuilt digital display provided for the quill feed, are there any advantages in fitting a Z-axis sensor and 3-axis DRO, or does experience suggest that the type of z-axis display fitted to chinese mills of this level will be adequate? Is it simply a question of deciding what level of accuracy I can live with?

[BluesbreakerParticipant @bluesbreaker]

[Enough!Participant @enough]

When I fitted DRO's to my WM16 lookalike I fitted one to the z-axis. It's so long ago that I don't remember the details but it seems to me that the existing readout didn't truly read the absolute position of the quill but rather linked to the quill adjustment gearing somewhere – at least part of which was a friction drive.

Others may have a better clue on this and later machines might be different in this respect.

It wasn't trivial fitting the DRO to the z-axis (although quite do-able).

[David George 1Participant @davidgeorge1]

Hi welcome to the forum. I have fitted an M-DRO 3 axis to my V16 mill and wouldn't be without the 3rd axis.

David

[Dave Smith 14Participant @davesmith14]

The fitted quill DRO only reads to two decimal places, which I found limiting, so I fitted optical DRO's to the x,y and replaced the Warco Quill. If you fit a 3 axis read out and you can always decide later to do either the quill or Z

Dave.

[Enough!Participant @enough]

Dave's post, differentiating between the quill and the z-axis made me realise I my post above is confused. To be clear, the DRO scale I fitted to mine was on the quill not the z-axis as I stated.

[BluesbreakerParticipant @bluesbreaker]

Thanks for all your replies and advice. I think I'll aim for a kit with a 3-axis display, and then I have the option to fit the Z-axis later on as Dave suggests.

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