FILENAMES:

DRO-xaxis.jpg
DRO-newyaxis.jpg
DRO-oldyaxis.jpg
DRO-detail1.jpg
DRO-detail2.jpg
DRO-detail3.jpg

DESCRIPTION:

These are pictures of a DRO setup using digital caliper scales.

Posted by Phil Teague <philt@bham.lib.al.us>.  

The following description was provided:

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The enclosed photos are of an inexpensive DRO setup for a mill/drill. The orginal design
was by Roland Friestad of Cardinal Engineering (www.cardinaleng.com). The plans appeared 
in the Sept-Oct and Nov-Dec issues of HSM.

Since the original plan was for a Grizzly G1005 model of mill/drill I had to modify it 
for the larger RF-30 series of mill/drill. The orginal plan also called for using a piece
of wire to allow for alignment of the caliper and the mount. I later changed this to use a 
magnet arrangement that offers quicker removal and mounting of the caliper and very
good alignment of the caliper and the mount. The other modification I made was to add
an acrylic cover over the top of both calipers to protect them from swarf and fluid. I do
not use a flood type system so I don't know if this would be sufficient to keep all fluid 
away from the calipers, however, I have not had any problems with the calipers since I 
started to use the covers.

The advantages of this DRO are pretty obvious:

1. Inexpensive. The price of digital calipers has dropped to the point that a pair of 8"
and 12" calipers are well under $100. Make sure that you get calipers that don't automatically
turn off or, if they do, will be restored to the setting they showed before they turned off.

2. They are easy to read because they are mounted in easy view. You can get larger display 
calipers and it may help you even more. You could use a remote display, but, I don't think
this is necessary.

3. The calipers can be quickly mounted and unmounted to be used for other purposes. I can 
mount and unmount each caliper in less than a minute. The use of magnets for the mount 
speeds things up. I used magnets from old hard disk drives.

4. The contruction of the mounts is not a difficult machining project even for a beginner,
and the cost of the materials for mounts makes the total cost of the project about the
lowest priced DRO you can buy. You can buy the materials from Cardinal if you don't 
have access to some other source.

Photo:

Newyaxis.jpg shows the magnet mount

Oldyaxis.jpg shows the original mount with wire

detail1.jpg shows the magnet mount

detail2.jpg shows another view

detail3.jpg shows magnet

xaxis.jpg shows the acrylic cover