DRO fitting

[toglhot]

I bought a Shahe 150mm DRO for my crosslide a while back and finished fitting it today.   Unfortunately, none of the fittings/brackets were of any use so I made up my own as well as a cover to protect it from coolant.   The DRO was quite cheap at $US28 ($Aust38) but it works superbly.   I milled a couple of clamps for the bar using a vertical slide and the DRO, so easy with this DRO:   The bar was 4mm thick so I milled a groove 3.95 deep, fits great.   I also had to manufacture a couple of brackets, a splash guard and a meter base.   Don't know how I ever got along without a DRO.   I fitted a Shahe DRO for the carriage a week or so ago also.

Everything fits well and the DRO works great, I'll pull it down when I have time and neaten up the fitting a little.

[pepi]

Nice. I'm thinking about DRO for the lathe my mill has one, sure makes the math easy. I see you have 2 there, cross slide and ? Please post photos of the other also.

Greg

[Ed ke6bnl]

(11-18-2017, 04:33 AM)toglhot Wrote: I bought a Shahe 150mm DRO for my crosslide a while back and finished fitting it today.   Unfortunately, none of the fittings/brackets were of any use so I made up my own as well as a cover to protect it from coolant.   The DRO was quite cheap at $US28 ($Aust38) but it works superbly.   I milled a couple of clamps for the bar using a vertical slide and the DRO, so easy with this DRO:   The bar was 4mm thick so I milled a groove 3.95 deep, fits great.   I also had to manufacture a couple of brackets, a splash guard and a meter base.   Don't know how I ever got along without a DRO.   I fitted a Shahe DRO for the carriage a week or so ago also.

Everything fits well and the DRO works great, I'll pull it down when I have time and neaten up the fitting a little.

I have the same type on my 11 in. lathe they work great and I have them tied into a Touch-DRO bluetooth readout on my tablet.  I just found a new feature yesterday on the Touch dro. I can mic the part and put that in the reading for the axis and then turn the part down to the size I was looking for. or put in the difference of the part dimension and the and the final dimension and turn to zero.

The only thing different I did is I used some neodymium magnets and some neodymium computer hard drive magnet to attach the dro to the Zee and the crossslide and it has worked great and simple install. and can move to another device if I need to.

[Highpower]

(11-18-2017, 04:33 AM)toglhot Wrote:  Don't know how I ever got along without a DRO.

Everybody seems to say that. I'm beginning to think there may be some truth to it.

Nice job on the install.

I think having to work up some sort of custom mounting hardware is also pretty standard on any DRO installation since we don't live in a perfect world unfortunately.

[Dr Stan]

(11-18-2017, 04:33 AM)toglhot Wrote: Don't know how I ever got along without a DRO. 

Typically in industry a DRO costing $1500 to $2000 will pay for itself in a month or less just from increased efficiency without even considering improved quality.  I was cutting some 1.750" X 3 TPI acme threads and turned the cross slide in one turn too far.  Needless to say that caused pieces to go flying and I needed to change my underwear.  

A DRO would have paid for itself with that single

Almost forgot.  Very good job on the installation.

[Vinny]

Congrats toglhot, homemadetools.net featured your DRO mod and your lathe bench today!