Adding a DRO to my mill

Credit card.

I am assuming that when fitting, it's best to keep the 'open' side of the scale down and in the z axis, pointing backwards to avoid getting crap inside.

The scales have rubber seals, but better to be safe than sorry.

I think I will put the Z scale on the knee rather than the quill as I would only move the quill for drilling.

I will probably strip off the original cross feed stuff to make some room for the X scale at the front of the table.

I did wonder about using some rare earth magnets to hold the scales on, instead of drilling and tapping but to much risk of moving something out of alignment.

Careful adjustment needed to ensure that the scale is square to the moving axis.

Any pointers would be welcome!

Story so far:

X and Y fitted and working. The sliding part of the scale is very sensitive to flex in the brackets, but in use these have no load on them, so they should never flex in use.

The DRO display unit did nothing out of the box, the display came up but no buttons and no readout. I found the secret setup button and entered the password and found the set default command.

Once I did this, it started working fine.

Next day, same thing happened, no action initially until I reset the default...

No idea why.

I'm waiting to see what HXX say about this.

I slightly misjudged the Y travel by about 8mm, so I will have to stagger the bracket by 8 mm.

Just finished fitting the scales.

Fairly easy to do, X was easy as the table is nice and flat and has a handy T slot along the front.

Y was not too bad, I used the Y leadscrew nut holder bolts to hold the slider bracket.

Z was more awkward as the side of the machine is not flat. I put two studs in and mounted onto those. The top stud went into the oil reservoir but it stopped leaking once I got the stud in and tightened up!

The display box seems to need setting to default every so often for some reason. HXX gave me a series of button presses to try but it still fails to start up sometimes. Works fine after resetting to defaults.

Still need to add chip shields, but here are some pics:

That sounds like the DRO's losing backup power for internal memory when the mains is switched off. When mains power is available again a Reset restores sanity by overwriting the internal memory with factory defaults. You're unlikely to end up owning a brick because of the problem. Annoying though. Couple of things to try:

• There may be a battery providing backup power that's either faulty or come loose in transit. As the whole unit may be faulty you probably shouldn't take it apart, but sometimes batteries can be replaced via a cover on the back of the case. Worth checking.
• Computer based units occasionally lose their marbles due to loose connectors. Also worth checking that all the plugs and sockets are seated correctly and the cabling can't flap about.

Some equipments use a big capacitor rather than a battery to provide standby power. Fixing them is usually a solder job. I wouldn't mess with it unless the unit was out of warranty.

Dave

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 05/12/2017 18:14:04

My thoughts too, but HXX told me there is no battery.

It probably has flash memory or eeprom which don't need any backup power.

I did wonder if there was mains noise corrupting the memory, but the earth is good and there's no dodgy earth potential.

It's possible the psu inside is not powering up cleanly and the processor isn't coming out of reset properly.

I will see if HXX have any other ideas. They are the actual manufacturer of the DRO, so they should know what's going on.

It's annoying as once it's going, it works fine.

Finally fitted all the chip guards.

Question for anyone reading this, who has a Chinese DRO: What does the RI button do?

Manual says:

RI: Find RI

Function: prompt set the size of Zero and RI

Example: for x

1. clear the x as ABS, press Xo

2.press RI -> X

3.move the machine tool when it come by the RI

I have no idea what this is supposed to do!