I haven't been around for a long time but I thought I'd let everone
know about a nice DRO system I found. I searched the group using
google and it seems no one has mentioned it yet. Kit form of course
but nice features and less than a third the price of a commercial
system.

I bought three systems. Very nice and professional for the price.
There's no red filter for the LED readouts supplied but I'm working on
a source for it now. I should have the material by the 17th. I have
some red display lenses and do they do a nice job of increasing
contrast.

The DRO works directly with the chinese scales and now can be used
with any quadrature output encoder too. I plan on using them on my
mill, lathe and table saw with a channel used to indicate blade angle.
Leter I will get one for my chop saw too. I've come up with a simple
method for measuring over 40" on the table saw using a rotary encoder
although the accuracy probably won't be good enough for the lathe.

The website has a bill of materials page where you can order all the
components you need with a click of your mouse. The also have a yahoo
group for discussions and help.

Check it out.

I did peruse through some of the recents posts to the wreck and Gunner
you still keep me laughing :^).

Website:

http://www.shumatech.com/products/dro-350/index.htm

Yahoo Group:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ShumaTech/


John

Please note that my return address is wrong due to the amount of junk email I get.
So please respond to this message through the newsgroup.

"John Flanagan" wrote in message
...



http://www.shumatech.com/products/dro-350/index.htm

Yahoo Group:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ShumaTech/


Thanks John, nice resource. Looks like with an adaptor available from the
same place, the US Digital readers and strips from just about any HP
bubblejet printer could be used in a dro! (I've been saving dead printers
for just such a project).


John

Please note that my return address is wrong due to the amount of junk
email I get.
So please respond to this message through the newsgroup.

Welcome back.

Statics wrote:

Thanks John, nice resource. Looks like with an adaptor available from the
same place, the US Digital readers and strips from just about any HP
bubblejet printer could be used in a dro! (I've been saving dead printers
for just such a project).


What kind of accuracy do the readers and strips from the printers
provide? I was looking at a new HP wide format printer at a store, and
the strip is not much for rugged.

Would the converters on the site allow the use of their box with "real"
DRO scales? Ebay seems to usually have a pile of scales available for
pretty cheap.

Cheers
Trevor Jones

Trevor Jones wrote:
Statics wrote:

Thanks John, nice resource. Looks like with an adaptor available
from the same place, the US Digital readers and strips from just
about any HP bubblejet printer could be used in a dro! (I've been
saving dead printers for just such a project).


What kind of accuracy do the readers and strips from the printers
provide? I was looking at a new HP wide format printer at a store, and
the strip is not much for rugged.

Would the converters on the site allow the use of their box with
"real" DRO scales? Ebay seems to usually have a pile of scales
available for pretty cheap.

Cheers
Trevor Jones

If there are a lot of auctions in your area you should be able to pick up a
machine with a DRO installed fairly cheap.

ATP wrote:

If there are a lot of auctions in your area you should be able to pick up a
machine with a DRO installed fairly cheap.

Should be able to. Except for all the fricking morons that have a
pocket full of money and desperatly want to spend it whenever a machine
tool comes up. Took me 2 1/2 years to find a small mill. Drove over 8
hours each way to pick it up, and still paid more than I wanted.

Watched two guys from a shop duke it out over a twenty year old surface
grinder at an auction a while back. Yeesh! it sold for about triple what
I thought it should be worth it it had been complete and working. Any
mill that looks sorta OK tends to be around $4000-6000 to start, and the
dealers are pricing stuff as if it had to be carried over the mountains
on somebodies (well paid somebody, at that) back.

Finding a DRO on a machine is effectivly a non-starter, as a result.
For the prices a used one goes for, I can buy new.

But, on the other hand, this project looks like fun, would give me
satisfaction, even if all I was doing was populating a board and
building a box for it, and is relatively cheap. Perhaps not as cheap as
trolling ebay for the various parts to build a whole system, but the
size of this one fits well with my shop.

I have a very little knowledge of things electric, and can do a decent
solder joint if I put some effort into it.
Oh yeah. "Here" is Edmonton Alberta, Canada. Not a lot of machine tools
up for grabs. Not for cheap, anyway.

Cheers
Trevor Jones

On Thu, 19 Feb 2004 06:26:32 -0700, Trevor Jones
wrote:

ATP wrote:

If there are a lot of auctions in your area you should be able to pick up a
machine with a DRO installed fairly cheap.

Should be able to. Except for all the fricking morons that have a
pocket full of money and desperatly want to spend it whenever a machine
tool comes up. Took me 2 1/2 years to find a small mill. Drove over 8
hours each way to pick it up, and still paid more than I wanted.

Watched two guys from a shop duke it out over a twenty year old surface
grinder at an auction a while back. Yeesh! it sold for about triple what
I thought it should be worth it it had been complete and working. Any
mill that looks sorta OK tends to be around $4000-6000 to start, and the
dealers are pricing stuff as if it had to be carried over the mountains
on somebodies (well paid somebody, at that) back.

Finding a DRO on a machine is effectivly a non-starter, as a result.
For the prices a used one goes for, I can buy new.

But, on the other hand, this project looks like fun, would give me
satisfaction, even if all I was doing was populating a board and
building a box for it, and is relatively cheap. Perhaps not as cheap as
trolling ebay for the various parts to build a whole system, but the
size of this one fits well with my shop.

I have a very little knowledge of things electric, and can do a decent
solder joint if I put some effort into it.
Oh yeah. "Here" is Edmonton Alberta, Canada. Not a lot of machine tools
up for grabs. Not for cheap, anyway.

Cheers
Trevor Jones
Greetings Trevor,
I think I'm gonna build on too. Not sure yet about the scales. I
emailed Scott Schumate to see if the last digit could be made to read
individual tenths instead of either 0 or 5 tenths. He said it would
require some major changes but if enough requests were made he would
think about doing that. So it won't be any good for my lathe work but
will be close enough for most mill work. I am going to e-mail him
again and ask which, if any, commercial glass scales will work with
his unit.
Cheers,
Eric

Eric R Snow wrote in message . ..
On Thu, 19 Feb 2004 06:26:32 -0700, Trevor Jones
wrote:

ATP wrote:

If there are a lot of auctions in your area you should be able to pick up a
machine with a DRO installed fairly cheap.

Should be able to. Except for all the fricking morons that have a
pocket full of money and desperatly want to spend it whenever a machine
tool comes up. Took me 2 1/2 years to find a small mill. Drove over 8
hours each way to pick it up, and still paid more than I wanted.

Watched two guys from a shop duke it out over a twenty year old surface
grinder at an auction a while back. Yeesh! it sold for about triple what
I thought it should be worth it it had been complete and working. Any
mill that looks sorta OK tends to be around $4000-6000 to start, and the
dealers are pricing stuff as if it had to be carried over the mountains
on somebodies (well paid somebody, at that) back.

Finding a DRO on a machine is effectivly a non-starter, as a result.
For the prices a used one goes for, I can buy new.

But, on the other hand, this project looks like fun, would give me
satisfaction, even if all I was doing was populating a board and
building a box for it, and is relatively cheap. Perhaps not as cheap as
trolling ebay for the various parts to build a whole system, but the
size of this one fits well with my shop.

I have a very little knowledge of things electric, and can do a decent
solder joint if I put some effort into it.
Oh yeah. "Here" is Edmonton Alberta, Canada. Not a lot of machine tools
up for grabs. Not for cheap, anyway.

Cheers
Trevor Jones
Greetings Trevor,
I think I'm gonna build on too. Not sure yet about the scales. I
emailed Scott Schumate to see if the last digit could be made to read
individual tenths instead of either 0 or 5 tenths. He said it would
require some major changes but if enough requests were made he would
think about doing that. So it won't be any good for my lathe work but
will be close enough for most mill work. I am going to e-mail him
again and ask which, if any, commercial glass scales will work with
his unit.
Cheers,
Eric

If you have higher resolution scales,
can't you just move the decimal point?
pete

Trevor Jones wrote:
ATP wrote:

If there are a lot of auctions in your area you should be able to
pick up a machine with a DRO installed fairly cheap.

Should be able to. Except for all the fricking morons that have a
pocket full of money and desperatly want to spend it whenever a
machine tool comes up. Took me 2 1/2 years to find a small mill.
Drove over 8 hours each way to pick it up, and still paid more than I
wanted.

You live in the wrong area, I guess. Basic manual surface grinders are going
for about $50. I just saw a Bridgeport with a Mitutoyo DRO setup sell for
$950. An old Van Norman with a DRO went real cheap, less than 200 IIRC, the
guy planned on stripping it and selling the rest of the machine for scrap.

"Trevor Jones" wrote in message
...
Statics wrote:

Thanks John, nice resource. Looks like with an adaptor available from
the
same place, the US Digital readers and strips from just about any HP
bubblejet printer could be used in a dro! (I've been saving dead
printers
for just such a project).


What kind of accuracy do the readers and strips from the printers
provide? I was looking at a new HP wide format printer at a store, and
the strip is not much for rugged.

Not as good as real glass scales. The best plastic strips from usdigital
are 500 line units, with quadrature reading they yield 2000 transitions per
inch. However, most (old and cheap) printers do not use these strips.

To match the coefficient of thermal expansion of the machine they are being
used on, it is possible to edge clamp them full length into a rail of the
same material as the rest of the machine and they maintain accuracy
throughout normal temperature swings.

Their main advantage is cost. In single quantities, the reader heads are
about $25 iirc and the linear strip is about $12 for the first 7 inches,
longer than that it is by the inch.

Not extremely useful by themselves, but very handy for the oem or above
average tinkerer. That is, though I am not familiar with standard input for
dro readouts I would guess that the format does not allow simple plug and
play. Hence the converter dongles for sale at the site mentioned earlier to
adapt to his chosen standard.

Would the converters on the site allow the use of their box with "real"
DRO scales? Ebay seems to usually have a pile of scales available for
pretty cheap.

Cheers
Trevor Jones

ATP wrote:

You live in the wrong area, I guess. Basic manual surface grinders are going
for about $50. I just saw a Bridgeport with a Mitutoyo DRO setup sell for
$950. An old Van Norman with a DRO went real cheap, less than 200 IIRC, the
guy planned on stripping it and selling the rest of the machine for scrap.

Apparently I do live in the wrong area. If I was seeing prices like
those around here, I'd need a whole lot bigger shop. :-)

Where are you?

Cheers
Trevor Jones

The best plastic strips from usdigital
are 500 line units, with quadrature reading they yield 2000 transitions per
inch. However, most (old and cheap) printers do not use these strips.

I recently disassembled an HP ink jet printer, model 620(?), that had a rotary
encoder from Rhulatec that has 1800 grads on a disc approx. 3 in dia.
Rhulatec's web site says they have 1000 lines per inch strips as a standard
item. You might check them out as a supplier or look for HP ink jets to salvage
some high res. rotary encoders.

Richard Coke

On 19 Feb 2004 10:49:04 -0800, (Pete Logghe)
wrote:

Eric R Snow wrote in message . ..
On Thu, 19 Feb 2004 06:26:32 -0700, Trevor Jones
wrote:

ATP wrote:

If there are a lot of auctions in your area you should be able to pick up a
machine with a DRO installed fairly cheap.

Should be able to. Except for all the fricking morons that have a
pocket full of money and desperatly want to spend it whenever a machine
tool comes up. Took me 2 1/2 years to find a small mill. Drove over 8
hours each way to pick it up, and still paid more than I wanted.

Watched two guys from a shop duke it out over a twenty year old surface
grinder at an auction a while back. Yeesh! it sold for about triple what
I thought it should be worth it it had been complete and working. Any
mill that looks sorta OK tends to be around $4000-6000 to start, and the
dealers are pricing stuff as if it had to be carried over the mountains
on somebodies (well paid somebody, at that) back.

Finding a DRO on a machine is effectivly a non-starter, as a result.
For the prices a used one goes for, I can buy new.

But, on the other hand, this project looks like fun, would give me
satisfaction, even if all I was doing was populating a board and
building a box for it, and is relatively cheap. Perhaps not as cheap as
trolling ebay for the various parts to build a whole system, but the
size of this one fits well with my shop.

I have a very little knowledge of things electric, and can do a decent
solder joint if I put some effort into it.
Oh yeah. "Here" is Edmonton Alberta, Canada. Not a lot of machine tools
up for grabs. Not for cheap, anyway.

Cheers
Trevor Jones
Greetings Trevor,
I think I'm gonna build on too. Not sure yet about the scales. I
emailed Scott Schumate to see if the last digit could be made to read
individual tenths instead of either 0 or 5 tenths. He said it would
require some major changes but if enough requests were made he would
think about doing that. So it won't be any good for my lathe work but
will be close enough for most mill work. I am going to e-mail him
again and ask which, if any, commercial glass scales will work with
his unit.
Cheers,
Eric

If you have higher resolution scales,
can't you just move the decimal point?
pete
No. He said you could do that but then the maximum reading goes from
99.9995 to 9.99995. Unless the travel you want is less than that it
won't work.
ERS

Trevor Jones wrote:
ATP wrote:

You live in the wrong area, I guess. Basic manual surface grinders
are going for about $50. I just saw a Bridgeport with a Mitutoyo DRO
setup sell for $950. An old Van Norman with a DRO went real cheap,
less than 200 IIRC, the guy planned on stripping it and selling the
rest of the machine for scrap.

Apparently I do live in the wrong area. If I was seeing prices like
those around here, I'd need a whole lot bigger shop. :-)

Where are you?

Cheers
Trevor Jones

Long Island, and I am thinking about building a bigger shop. Truthfully at
this point, I don't always know what I'm looking at, but I can see where the
dealers are willing to go pricewise on stuff, and I know how much some stuff
will bring on ebay. When I got my first Nichols mill recently I didn't know
an arbor from an arborvitae, and I'm still ignorant but gaining some
experience.