Fitting a DRO to Chester 3-in-1

I'm after some advice - has anyone fitted a DRO to a Chester Centurion 3-in-1? Alternatively, can anyone comment on my cunning plan...

The sketch below shows the scale (in a extrusion) freely running behind two clamps that are bolted to the body of my machine. The encoder is mounted on L-bracket between the two. The bottom of the scale is attached to another bracket, and it's here I need some advice. Somehow this bottom bracket needs to attach to the quill, I'm not sure whether bolting it would be a suitable option, and I'm considering some kind of jubilee clip type solution.

Can anyone comment?

(The sketch below is simplified, showing just part of the body of the machine and the quill. Spindle ommitted for clarity)

You could easily make the bottom bracket into something like an Exhaust Pipe Clamp

Or [better] make two similar "bottom bracket" components and clamp them with long CapHead screws.

MichaelG.

Comme ca?

Michael, you're a genius... Cheers!

Hi Captain Biggles,
Thsi is the way I did it on my X3 mill.

+

This was made from a piece of scrap aluminium I had been given. The external shape was the scrap piece as it was given to me. I bored the hole to fit the end of the quill then cut the gap at the front. There is a length of 6 mm studding tapped into the left hand side with a locknut. I also left a loose nut between the locknut and the right hand side to spring the hole open a bit to make it easy to remove. There is also about an 8mm hole on the centre line at the back about 20 mm behind the hole for the quill. There is then a saw cut from this hole to the back of the piece of metal so thes is where it will flex when tightened up. (You could just have a smaller distance from the main hole to the back of the piece of metal.)

Les.

Edited By Les Jones 1 on 05/03/2013 11:04:41

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Looks good to me.

MichaelG.

Who says design by committee is a bad thing?

Cheers all!

Brill I love it .