Fitting DRO to a WM16 Mill

Hi

I have just taken delivery of a WM16 and cannot see how to fit the DRO to the table.

The Table measures 700mm long and at 1 end has the coolant drain fitted

I have fitted the X axis with home made brackets but can't seem to find where to mount the reader head for the table

Any ideas please

sorry about not starting a new thread for this

Edited By JasonB on 04/03/2017 13:13:59

I have taken a couple of photos of my dro fitted to the X axis (WM18). If you need any more photos or measurement just shout

Meant to ask, what DRO have you bought

Edited By petro1head on 04/03/2017 15:03:27

Hi Trevor

​Look in my album ... DRO... it shows pics of how I fitted DRO's to my WM 16... drop me a pm if you need any further info'

George.

Hi Trevor, see my album "WM16 gets a DRO" for my take on this. I did not use any of the supplied brackets, instead I opted to make a special bracket to carry the Y-axis read head at 68° to the vertical. The x-axis read head has a simpler bracket which is held in place using the fixing screws for the neoprene swarf guard.

Cheers, Tony

Am I reading you correctly there, Tony .... that you fitted the X-axis DRO to the rear of the table? I considered doing that because I have a power feed whose limit switches need to attach to the slot on the front side - but as far as I could see, mounting the DRO to the rear would significantly limit travel in the Y-direction.

So mine is pretty much a copy of what George did although with different (optical) scales .... and the power feed - well it just gets along without limit switches.

Correction to my previous post: angle is 58°

Yes, nothing wrong with your reading skills, Bandersnatch.

I considered putting the scale, magnetic in my case, on the front but I just didn't want to clutter things up. I reasoned that I could always relocate it if it didn't work out and so far so good. I estimate that the y-axis travel has been reduced by about 25mm but I have not yet measured it.

Cheers, Tony

Edited By Tony Marshall on 05/03/2017 12:39:13

If you want to see how cluttered it will look - this is the set-up that I used for my scale installation. The mill is a Warco VMC, so a bit beefier than the WM16, but you could scale it down accordingly. It allows the use of the power feed stops as well as the travel stops, albeit with slightly reduced movement to the X-axis. In my experience, X-axis travel loss is less of a problem than for the Y-axis. If things get really tight, it's a simple job to just remove the slotted bar and you have all the X-axis travel back again. Horses for courses, I guess.

John

Thanks, Tony. I'll put a few coins in the Tip-Box at the Optometrist's.

I suppose everyone would like a bit more X and Y travel (and Z if it comes to that) but I seem to run out more in Y direction that any other.

Interesting setup, John. Maybe I should revisit mine vis-a-vis the PF limit switches. Though, as I recall, the problem with piggy-backing the limit switch box over the DRO on my WM16 clone was that it crashed into the handle and limited the Y-axis movement in that direction.

I can see that would be a problem. However, maybe all that would need would be an extension to the handle boss, moving it physically further away from the advancing table, if you catch my drift?

John

Hmmm .... hadn't thought of that (must be why you make the big bucks ).

Thanks, John.

Many thanks to all and thanks to some excellent photo's I now have a fitted and working DRO, never had one before, but then again never had a new Mill before

I have used a combination of methods to achieve the maximum travel on both axis and am generally pleased with the result, its only the basic magnetic type but is more than accurate for my needs

I will hopefully add some photo's to my album for future ref

Once again thanks all

So now that I have a shinny new mill what are the checks on alignment I should be doing in the knowledge that it is a chinese machine,

is there a list of "mods" under the banner of improvements that I should be looking out for

What is the correct procedure for checking run out - up/down, In/out and side to side

what is reasonable and more important is what equipment do I need to perform such tasks

Hope I get the same type of response as per the DRO

Thanks

Just to let you know I have uploaded photo's of where I was able to install the M-DRO onto the WM 16

Hope it helps others

Thanks

Have a look at this thread <LINK> .

In it I asked 'am I doing it right', and provided pictures showing the DTI set-up I was using. As the answer was broadly 'yes', with useful suggestions, I hope it answers your question too.

By the way my experience with Chinese kit has been good. True it's made down to a price and is a little rough, but I haven't had anything that couldn't be fixed by minor fettling. For what I do it's been good value for money.

Dave

Hi Dave

Thanks for that Link, Looks like I know what I will be doing this weekend

Cheers