Homemade DRO questions

[compressor man]

I would love to have DROs on my mini lathe and X2 mill (who wouldnt?). However, spending more on the DRO than I did on the actual tool is unfortunately out of the question for quite a while. I have seen people make their own out of digital calipers. My question is: can suitable DROs be made out of cheapo calipers or would they stop working as soon as some oil was spattered on them? I wonder this because the really nice calipers seem to boast about being "coolant proof", but I do not see that on the cheapo ones (Harbor Freight, for example)

 

[kcmillin]

I purchased the cheap DRO from littlemachineshop.com. These are the exact same thing as the electronic calipers you are talking about. Not long after installing it, the large 20" expensive scale decided not to work. I beleive oil and coolant are the culpret.


If you are looking for a way to accuartly get acuatua table position, I would get dial calipers. These wont fail due to oil and whatnot. and much easier to see.

Currently I use indicators mounted to magnetic mounts to get the table position.

also, the dials on the mill should be quite accurate when moving in one direction. I like to take a small ruler with .010 graduations on it and mount it to the table with magnets, and then line it up with a reference mark. This eliminates the need to count revolutions of the dial.

kel

 

[fdew]

There is a up side. when the nice 20 in DRO fails go on line and buy a 6 in digital caliper with a head that looks just like the bad one and swap them. In other words, if you do kill it, you can fix it for $10 and 30 min work. I have done it, It isn't hard.

Frank

 

[kcmillin]

There is a up side. when the nice 20 in DRO fails go on line and buy a 6 in digital caliper with a head that looks just like the bad one and swap them. In other words, if you do kill it, you can fix it for $10 and 30 min work. I have done it, It isn't hard.

Frank

I am going to have to try this. Thanks

Can the scales themselves get damaged by oil or coolant? or anything els?

kel

 

[Twmaster]

The body of the scale can be damaged. The capacitive strip embedded in the body is what the head uses to count distance. It's kinda hard to damage the scale unless you physically injure the capacitive strip.

Otherwise as mentioned above, run them till dead. Replace the head.

 

[compressor man]

There is a up side. when the nice 20 in DRO fails go on line and buy a 6 in digital caliper with a head that looks just like the bad one and swap them. In other words, if you do kill it, you can fix it for $10 and 30 min work. I have done it, It isn't hard.

Frank

Now this is a valuable piece of information, thanks. I love this forum!