Chinese LCD DRO

I want to fit a DRO to my mill. Has anyone any experience of these?

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Edited By JasonB on 28/07/2020 07:08:32

Ooops! Sorry. I will rework the question...

I was considering the higher end options with the magnetic scales, but it is a lot of money for a hobby machine.

I have seen some budget LCD DROs with optical scales from the usual Chinese suppliers. These look more intuitive to use than the older LED ones, but I cannot find much in the way of reviews as they seem to be a fairly new offering.

Has anyone had any experience of these?

One of the models is a ToAuto DRO-3VA.

Others look to be the seem thing but re-badged.

As nobody has come back with any horror stories, I decided to take the gamble.

An LCD display and 3 scales have arrived over the last few days.

All seem to work okay and look to be reasonable quality.

I have fitted the easy bit:

Looking good. Good luck fitting the scales. Youtube has lots of vids of fitting these to most machines. So have a good scout round just in case there are problems, which you may encounter.

Steve.

I have been watching and re-watching videos. One chap called ADE recently posted a very good series of 4 videos fitting a DRO to a Warco WM16. At the moment I am considering following his approach.

Anyone with any advice/pictures/links that may help would be appreciated.

All went well fitting the scales, and all seems to be accurate and repeatable,

I have set the direction to what I think is conventional:

Y increases if the table is moved back, X increases if the table moves left.

i have been using the mill for a couple of months now without any issues.

I have seen something today that I do not think is right.

If I set up a line hole position right/up the line is actually right/down.

If I set up a bolt hole circle, the holes are mirrored in the Y direction.

I have found someone's video on YouTube that demonstrates this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8tK8m-6vjA

(jump to 13 minutes into the video).

I think I have 2 options: Invert the Y direction so that Y increases if the table moves forward, or remember that the angle must be reversed when defining the pattern.

Has anyone else seen this, or am I doing something silly?

Edited By IRT on 06/02/2021 23:39:56

I have the MDRO fitted to my Mill. British supplied i believe. Also i see the supplied from overseas models fitted to most others because of the cost. I have not heard of any makes causing any problems at all. The way you describe the problem sounds like a mirror type error. I would think that in the settings there may be a way to correct the problem you have. If you are like me then you fit & switch on. After the Mushroom cloud clears , you decide to have a good read of the instruction manual. Hope you get it sorted. Sorry not to be of much help.

steve.

I used similar scales with a simple display on my first mill which were OK for about 12 months, then started giving false readings or not returning to zero and replaced the scales with a second set which also gave problems. The scales are not sealed and don't like moisture and dirt. When I upgraded the mill. I fitted Easson glass scales and readout and no problems for 7 years.

Paul