Digital readout for mill/lathe

I'm looking to adding a dro to my mill/lathe.

I'd like opinion on what the membership have fitted to theirs, make/supplier...please

I fitted a second-hand (but little used) Sino DRO to my lathe last year, and once you find a decent manual that's not totally Chinglish it's excellent.

I've also just bought one of these **LINK** to fit to my mill. Cheap as chips with three glass scales, and bound to be more accurate than me! It hasn't arrived yet (tracking tells me it'll be here in 5 days) so we'll see how it looks when it arrives. I'm sure it will be fine for my purposes, and at the price it was too good to refuse!

Andy

hello john, ive fitted DRO 2axis with glass scales to my m300 lathe & 3 axis to my chester mill, works a treat very reliable, bought these of DROstore on dreaded bay cant fault them, took some time to fit cant fault them, allendale engnr do them virtualy same type (more expensive) but you do get tech back up.

regs Garry.

Andy, one of my considerations was after sales support.....there are many suppliers on ebay that are comparatively priced....and then there are those that are double the price!

I guess buy the lower cost one ?

Edited By John Rudd on 08/12/2016 21:48:50

Hi John,

I originally fitted cheap digital scales to my mill. One of the scales failed after a couple of months use which was replaced under waranty. It failed again when out of warranty and I paid full price for a replacement. It too gave wrong readings after some use.

I finally bit the bullet and purchased an Easson ES 14, 3 axis readout and glass scales which has been extremely reliable. Well worth the cost.

Lots of useful videos on Youtube at: **LINK**

Paul

John, I agree with Paul that cheap isn't always the best way to go, and I'm guessing that despite the assurances of the seller that aftersales will be scant at best. That said, it's a risk I'm prepared to take, and only time will tell.

If I was using this in a semi-production environment, I would be no doubt looking at mid to top range gear, but I'm not. This is a very part-time hobby, and I view the DRO as a nice convenience to have. If it fails, it won't stop me doing anything, it will just be inconvenient. You pays your money etc......

Andy

Originally 3 axis cheapies on old mill from Ketan lasted a few months covered up, 3 axis readout from Warco approx. £320 and drained batteries daily.

Current mill Sino glass scales with Machine Dro older budget type mill readout on offer at time all in £430. Works superb with the odd cleaning twice a year used daily.

M300 Machine Dro older budget readout 3 axis lathe, 1 glass for X axis and magnetic for cross and tail stock. Magnetic I would opt for the 1 micron, 5 micron not repeatable enough and will show up for repeat close fit tolerances, Sino glass fine at 5 micron. Approx £650 on offer 6 yrs ago.
However this one loses last memory powered off whereas mill above holds zero powered off. Also wont have it halving Y axis only without halving the other two scales.

Hi John,
​See my mail & pics...

http://www.model-engineer.co.uk/forums/postings.asp?th=86997

link for the dro's...

http://www.arceurotrade.co.uk/imagecache/41506808-8cf6-4276-b96e-a595010637fe_700x581.jpg

George.

Hi John, I have one of these .... caliper2pc units..... http://www.caliper2pc.de/produkte/caliper2pc/digitalreadout.html

It's a USB device that has 6 inputs so I have scales on both my lathe and mill connected to it. I have a touch screen monitor on an arm so I can move between the 2 and then just open the appropriate configuration file. The software is really good, has tool offset library, and loads of functions.

I've been really pleased with it.

John

At the risk of repeating myself from other, similar, threads, when I moved back to the UK a couple of years ago, I purchased a Warco VMC mill and added 3-axis glass scales and DRO to the order. At the time they had just introduced a "reduced-cost" - as opposed to cheap - system. Took me a while to fit and get it right - see some pics in an album - but it has performed faultlessly and as far as I can tell, accurately.

On a previous mini mill, I fitted caliper-type scales and found them to be battery-eating and unreliable. I wouldn't use them again.

John

P.S. Just checked the Warco web site and they are still doing the same system that I bought. I think the prices have gone up a bit, but still good value for the spec, in my opinion.

Remember if you are using the caliper type scales on a lathe then the cross slide is half the reading and if you use the usual Chinese scales with a rough tolerance of 1 thou [ possibly more ? ] it will be doubled on the diameter to 2+ thou.

Hardly conductive to accurate bearing fits etc.

TBH I feel that the quality of the glass scales and read head has improved vastly and the price has now come down to the point that the cheaper scales don't make economic sense when compared to accuracy and repeatability.

Just replaced my caliper style scales with the Warco System. The calipers eat batteries, 15 mins sometimes, would reset mid cut etc. The Warco system is mains powered so no batteries to worry about. I paid a bit more than the equivalent on Ebay but went for the customer support. Very pleased so far.

Dave

Both me and a friend now have M300 lathes.

I put out enquiries for two complete sets, one for each lathe.

After a recommendation from my local machine tool dealers I also included Goodwin Technology who they spoke highly of. Also went to Machine DRO and ems-i.

Considering all factors, we opted to go with Goodwin Technology. They also advertise some kits on the Bay. I ordered two machine specific kits for the M300.

We have both just finished our home installs. I have to say that their kits went on very well, just the usual hassle of some leaning over and body stretching to fit. The backing beams they supply with the scales really do facilitate fitting and the brackets supplied are substantial and more than ample. We opted for 5 micron on the saddle axis and 1 micron on the cross slide axis, both optical scales.

Just added a couple of photos in my album. Do not know why they get rotated as they are uploaded but heyho.

Perhaps somebody can let me know at some time how to rotate them once in the album.

Edited By MalcB on 09/12/2016 08:29:12

Hi John,
I have Shumatech DRO350's on my lathe and mill with Chinese scales. I would suggest that whichever display unit you go for that you choose one of the quadrature type of scales. (Glass, magnetic etc.) It seems that they are far more reliable than any of the Chinese type scales. When any of mine fail I will change them to quadrature scales. I also have a display on the mill that shows the main "Z" axis position, the quill position and the sum of these two values. I find this very useful. I think some DROs have this function. (By the way Thanks for your comments on the Drum switch thread. My view was that if it was too much trouble for the OP to post a picture from his album then why should I or anyone giving advice have to search though 56 pictures to find the right one.)

Les.

I think with the run up to Xmas, I might just put this in hold until after the NY.......just got too much to do...

Thanks for all of your suggestions/recommendations, all appreciated.

Les, its a shame that the Shumatech dro is no longer available, would have been a great build....

I got heartily sick of rotated pics. Talking about it on this forum just created a self-inflicted sh** storm about Windows, Apple etc. I take pics with my iPhone and by default they upload here the way they were taken which may even be upside down.

My solution is actually very quick and easy. Just open your JPG file in Paint (assuming Windows), make a tiny edit - any edit (eg literally just add a single pixel of colour somewhere or crop it if you like) - then exit/save. It will then upload and display as you saved it. If not Windows, I assume a similar procedure would work for iOS, OSX, Linux etc.

I have Machine DRO system on both lathe and milling machine. Easy to fit, worked first time, excellent after sales on the few queries I had. Friend of mine has several fitted in his production shop, same story.

I'm an all Newall guy, they are bombproof.

I looked into this recently - it's so annoying.

I don't think the forum provides any way of changing orientation once a picture is in the album.

The problem is to do with how software deals with rotation data provided by the camera. This chap provides an explanation and lots of examples. Rather worryingly, his article concludes "If Google can’t handle images consistently across their own sites, on a browser that they built, what hope do the rest of us have?"

The best way I've found of dealing with it is gimp. When a picture that's mis-rotated by this forum is loaded into gimp, it automatically pops up this dialogue:

Pressing Rotate and then overwriting the jpg fixes it. I usually use gimp to reduce the resolution of pictures before uploading them on the web, so this is no trouble. Unfortunately, gimp is not aimed at the casual user and it's easy to get lost in the works! I shall try and find something easier to use: muzzer's suggestion is promising.

Dave