Here are some pics of my installation. Im no expert by any stretch but happy to answer any questions. Seems like these DRO retrofits are always a series of tradeoffs & mine is no diferent. I might regret some decisions down the road, but I'll give it a go this way for now.
Travels seems accurate but I havent played with it much yet. I'm just happy I didnt have to rent some kind of lifting equipment to move the lathe away from the wall to get in from behind to install the x-axis hardware. I was able to reach in behind with a few painful contortions. The x-axis tube/encoder is Spherosyn. The y-axis & z (compound) is are Microsyn 10.
The one thing I would recommend is taking the time to make simple bar steel jigs to both drill & tap align holes in the cast iron. The only chunk I could easily remove & use a drill press was the compound bock. Everything else was hand drill action which was had me worrying at times. Mostly because some of the positions were just awkward & hard to get good aligmnent pressure wth the drill & straight in with the tap. Some holes went great & others seemed like they hit the equivalent of fir tree knots. Must have been a melted down tire rim in there! Anyway, all the holes are straight & cleanly tapped. Count myself lucky this time.
Travels seems accurate but I havent played with it much yet. I'm just happy I didnt have to rent some kind of lifting equipment to move the lathe away from the wall to get in from behind to install the x-axis hardware. I was able to reach in behind with a few painful contortions. The x-axis tube/encoder is Spherosyn. The y-axis & z (compound) is are Microsyn 10.
The one thing I would recommend is taking the time to make simple bar steel jigs to both drill & tap align holes in the cast iron. The only chunk I could easily remove & use a drill press was the compound bock. Everything else was hand drill action which was had me worrying at times. Mostly because some of the positions were just awkward & hard to get good aligmnent pressure wth the drill & straight in with the tap. Some holes went great & others seemed like they hit the equivalent of fir tree knots. Must have been a melted down tire rim in there! Anyway, all the holes are straight & cleanly tapped. Count myself lucky this time.
petertha, proud to be a member of MetalworkingFun since Sep 2012.