I've got a Newall Topaz Lathe DRO unit with a spherosyn and a microsyn
sensor, both ball in tube the microsyn being a smaller diameter version
with carbon fibre tube. The system was bought about 6.5 years ago but
only installed about 5 years ago. Last year after 4 years use the
display head power supply failed and was repaired by Newall. Now the X
axis (cross slide) microsyn sensor seems to have failed in that it fails
to register movement but doesn't register a signal failure. Prior to the
display head failure the unit had exhibited evidence of software
problems by the linear compensation getting corrupted on occasions but
this was obvious as the readout values were nonsense, the Newall repair
included a firmware upgrade. The newer firmware seems to have the odd
glitch but better than the previous and I noticed today that the tool
offsets feature doesn't work, not something I use normally. A call to
Newall due shortly.

Does anyone have experience with Newall kit. I can only compare against
the Sony Millman kit on my Bridgeport which is about twice as old and
hasn't given me any problems and considering the cost of the Newall kit
I would have expected better.

David Billington wrote:

I've got a Newall Topaz Lathe DRO unit with a spherosyn and a microsyn
sensor, both ball in tube the microsyn being a smaller diameter version
with carbon fibre tube. The system was bought about 6.5 years ago but
only installed about 5 years ago. Last year after 4 years use the
display head power supply failed and was repaired by Newall. Now the X
axis (cross slide) microsyn sensor seems to have failed in that it fails
to register movement but doesn't register a signal failure. Prior to the
display head failure the unit had exhibited evidence of software
problems by the linear compensation getting corrupted on occasions but
this was obvious as the readout values were nonsense, the Newall repair
included a firmware upgrade. The newer firmware seems to have the odd
glitch but better than the previous and I noticed today that the tool
offsets feature doesn't work, not something I use normally. A call to
Newall due shortly.

Does anyone have experience with Newall kit. I can only compare against
the Sony Millman kit on my Bridgeport which is about twice as old and
hasn't given me any problems and considering the cost of the Newall kit
I would have expected better.

I have one that was on my Bullard vtl when I bought the machine. It
seems to work ok so far and it is less affected by the metal dust coming
off the castings I machine.


John

On Dec 14, 6:41*pm, David Billington
wrote:

Does anyone have experience with Newall kit.

I have a Newall C80 on my mill at home and a Topaz on the mill at
work, neither have given me any problems in 5+ years on the Topaz and
4 years on the C80. I like them because of the ruggedness of the
scales over traditional optical ones. At work we have a Sargon on the
Hardinge lathe and the other mill, and they work fine but need to be
cleaned about once a year. In a couple years we'll probably pull off
the Sargon on the lathe and replace it with a Newall because the long
scale is starting to give us trouble.