Warco WM14 mill with DRO

Hi, I am proposing to purchase a Warco WM14 mill with factory fitted magnetic DRO which reads linear travel only. However, I have been advised that the factory fitted DRO is incompatable with the optical glass linear DRO that Warco can supply themselves plus the Warco supplied DRO can calculate a pcd.

Can anyone explain to me what I would be loosing by going for the cheaper factory fitted DRO (magnetic) as opposed to the more expensive DRO. I thought that there wasn't much difference between the magnetis strips as opposed the the glass optical strips.

Anyone's advice would be much appreciated.

Keith

My advice would be to talk to Warco and ask them if their offering can do the things that you want it to do.

Jim

The difference is not so much in the type of scales but in the box that they plug into. Sounds like the magnetic ones just give a display and a zero option and the Warco have a more sophisticated console that will do the more desirable things like half function (for finding ctr of a piece) and PCD which are the most used two functions. It will probably do arcs and a st number of holes along a line that don't get used so much.

A quick update. I was surfing the internet and came across a Grizzly G0758Z which seems to be the same as the Warco WM14 mill. On looking at the Grizzly web site found some details of the factory fitted DRO.

Based on what I saw, I will not be getting the Warco WM14 with the factory fitted DRO, but will purchase the one supplied by Warco, which I will fit myself.

Another option is to fit a Machine DRO kit, i did this to my WM16, great bit of kit and easy to fit.

DRO KIT

HI Keith, how did your purchase go?

I am looking at a Warco and would be buying and fitting DRO, so your experience is very pertinent to me.

ta

Rog

I originally had magnetic scales, but had heaps of problems with resetting randomly and eventually ditched the optical ones. I bought the Warco optical scales for both my WM16 Mill and WM250V Lathe, they are clones of all the other optical units you see advertised. You can get them cheaper on the web, but I an very happy with these and buying from Warco you get some comeback if you problems. One thing on your mill fit the, x axis scale on the front of the table, fitting it on the rear reduces the y axis travel by about 25mm. You loose the stops on the front but I never used them anyway.

Dave

Hi Rog, I ended up buying a Chester 20V mill in the end as Warco could only supply me with an imperial mill, WM14 or WM16. I was originally planning on getting the WM14 due to it's size, but then realised that I could fit the larger WM16 but went for the the Chester 20V as it was very similar and available.

As regards the DRO, I ordered mine through Chester, but it was sent to me from Machine DRO, so it is something that I still have to fit, but as I have fitted one previously from them to my lathe, I don't expect any problems. As far as I could see, the Warco one fitted to the WM16 is pretty much a standard optical DRO, whereas the factory fitted one fitted to the WM14 is non standard and incompatable with with other DRO's if you wanted to upgrade in the future.

When I spoke to Warco about the DRO, they could have supplied a standard DRO for the WM14 and fitted it for £200 if I wanted.

I would have probably bought a Warco mill if it had been available.

Hopefully my experience will help you with what you want to do, but if you have any further questions, please ask.

Keith

Hi Keith,

if you were fitting DRO’s would it have mattered if the machine was Imperial or Metric as the readouts would give either. I have a Chester V20 (imperial) fitted with optical DRO’s, fitting the read outs was the best move it makes it so easy to use.
Dave W

Hi Dave, no you are correct in that, but I just felt more comfortable going for the the metric version, plus i still need to get round to fitting the DRO on the mill.

Keith