New Sino DRO some lathe tooling and new laptop added to my shop

[deere_x475guy]

Hi gang, I ordered a Sino DRO from Matt at http://www.machinetoolonline.com/ on Wednesday around noon and it arrived Friday at 11:00 am. Pretty good shipping time and the package arrived in good shape. Over all I am really happy with it. The package included brackets, lots of cable ties, shims, screws ECT. I didn't have to use anything from my screw bin and no trips to the hardware store to get something I needed to finish mounting it. I pulled my Shooting Star off on Wednesday right after I place the ordered and had everything cleaned up and ready to mount the new one. I spent about 6 hours on Friday and 2 hours this morning before completing the install. I just finished setting up count directions and other parameters so I am ready to get back to building the the Webster.

Here are a few pics I took.

I also picked up some lathe tooling from Production Tool today. I wanted a smaller boring bar with and indexable bit. This one will fit a hole that has a .430 dia starter hole. I had some brazed boring bars that I bought 5 years ago and have managed to trash all the small ones. Lets see how long it takes me to take this bit out..

Computers and software are a pain in the butt...I am a Web Developer and every now and then I need to upgrade my software to keep up with the changing times....(don't we all?). Well this last upgrade pretty much put the stops to my 7 year old laptop. It is an HP with 512 meg of ram, slow AMD processor and was on it's 2nd hard drive and third cpu fan. So off I go laptop shopping to see what was out there. I was pretty shocked to see what you could get for under $800.00. The old HP cost me $1200.00 at Sam's club 7 years ago. The new one is an HP with 3 gig of ram, 160 meg HD, has a DVD burner with LightScribe (for those of you that may not know what this does it will use the laser to print a label on the Top of the DVD), with a 17" inch monitor all for under $800.00.

 

[Hal]

Bob

Just a couple questions, did your Shooting Star quit working or didn't you like it?
I see you have the your DRO mounted to the left side of the carriage, is there a reason as most are mount on the right side of the carriage.

I don't have a DRO for my lathe yet and was trying to figure out what brand to get and how to mount it.

Hal

 

[deere_x475guy]

Hi Hal, the Shooting Star works just like it did new. It's an older model and forgets your setting when shut down or a power failure happens. It's resolution is .0005 and has a lesser accuracy than the others. I did some nice work with it but for the reasons above I chose to upgrade. The newer Shooting Star models have addressed the issues mentioned in my second sentence. The price for one of the new Shooting Stars was more than I paid for the Sino ($549 delivered). I saved the packaging so when I sell the Shooting Star I will have boxes to ship it in.

I had the original cross slide scale from the Shooting Star mounted on the right. My cross slide locking screw is also on the right as is my carriage lock. I made brackets to hold the Shooting Star scale 3/8ths of inch so that I could use a tool to still lock down the cross slide. This time I decided to try it out on the left. It may not work out and if need be I will have to figure something else out.

 

[kennyd]

Hello Bob, just a quick question:
How come you did not purchase the Sino from CDCO, they seem to have the same DRO for under $500. I have been looking at them myself...

 

[deere_x475guy]

Kenny I got a 3 year guarantee with this unit from Matt and he spent a lot of time with me on the phone and didn't bad mouth other units. I am very please with the transacting and the unit (other than the manual sucks).

I just sold my Shooting Star to Ed Miles in Canada (from this board). He called me while I was typing this. He is quit a guy and we talked for almost an hour. He is 75 years old and still going strong and is in the process of building an engine using only loctite as a fastener. Very interesting guy to talk to indeed. He will post his project when the gets back from Brazil in April.