Enco Compound Slide Table

Terry G · 2004-05-06T04:10:46+00:00

I have the need for a compound slide table and I have been looking aroundfor a few days and have a couple of questions.First of all, I will be using this table in my 15" floor model drill press.I need it to drill holes in test jigs I am making. I need to be about .005"accuracy since the holes I am drilling are .027" dia. I am already runninga 5/32 Jacobs spring chuck in a MT2 collet chuck with a 1/2" collet. Thisseems to eliminate any play associated with the drill press.I have been pretty successful drilling .054 dia holes with my Palmgren 6"cross vise, but it just doesn't have the accuracy I need for these smallerholes.Anyway, I had my eye on a Mastercraft Model 800, 5x8" travel which sells for$364.00. I also saw an Enco which has the exact same specs, and lookidentical to this Mastercraft USA made model, but sells for $68.00. I studied the pictures, I could not find a single thing different aboutthem. They even have almost the same weight. The Mastercraft was like 40lbs, and the Enco was 36 lbs. I also looked at a Palmgren 4x6 travel tablewhich was around $500.00. That was a little much for me to spend.So my question is does anyone have any experience with the Asian made tablessuch as the Enco 5x12? I am so tempted to buy the Enco because it will costme $82.00 shipped right to my door. Though I usually spend the extra moneyand buy American made tools, I don't know this time. Could it be that thelabor is so much cheaper and that's why the Enco product sells for so muchless?I don't want to waste my money buying the Mastercraft for about $400.00(shipping and tax) if it is the same product, but I also don't want to wastemy money on an Enco if it is a piece of junk. I need the accuracy, that isimportant. I also read a review on the Enco, and they guy seemed to loveit. for any advice.Terry

May 06, 2004 25 Replies

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DoN. Nichols 22 years ago

Which kind? The runout indicators with the lever input which moves in an arc, or the ones with a shaft passing through the back which moves in a single straight line (plunger style)? The former are designed so they provide accurate measurements only at a specific angle of the lever to the workpiece surface. They are mostly good for relative indications (e.g. runout while you are truing something), not for absolute measurements. The plunger style, however, is a bit better, with no cosine error to deal with (if properly mounted).

Even the Chinese rectangular gauge blocks are spec'd to be within 0.000,050" (half a tenth), and I would expect them to meet that spec, so you are unlikely to have a combination which will come up to the resolution of the dial gauge unless the distribution of the sizes is really bad (not a true bell curve).

However -- other sets can be purchased down to 0.000,002" IIRC, at significantly higher cost. No need for these for my suggested use, of course, since the dial indicator is a 0-1.000" one graduated in "0.001" steps.

Amen!

Enjoy, DoN.

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Ted Edwards 22 years ago

Plunger. You can see a photo at

I would say a lot better. In use, I mount the DG in my height gage and use a square to set it orthogonal to the surface plate. A half degree error would be very easy to spot. 1-Cos(0.5degree)=0.000038 which would give 38 microinches/inch of travel. I am using comparison measurements which involve much less than 1" of travel so I expect the cosine error to be rather small. :-)

Note that mine are the Chinese cylindrical ones you mentioned. A handy feature of these is that they can be (carefully) joined with Allan screws so multiples are easy to handle when used as you suggested earlier.

Ted

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DoN. Nichols 22 years ago

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Good enough!

Agreed. Often the setup is rather casual, which is why I didn't make strong promises. :-)

O.K. That is one feature which my cylindrical set does not have, as they are solid. How good are the threads? Those on most cheap

1-2-3 blocks tend to be rather useless -- unless they happen to be a metric size which is *almost* but not quite a common inch size. :-)

Enjoy, DoN.

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Ted Edwards 22 years ago

Not bad at all. I can make a stack of three or four and not see appreciable error. Maybe I was just lucky or are they all that good?

Ted

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Terry G 22 years ago

I finished up two test fixtures today. I was very impressed with the Enco table. It actually worked, and held enough tolerance throughout its range to do what I needed. The markings on the dial indicators were a bit sloppy. Some where not very deep and a little hard to read, but after a while I got used to it. I cleaned it up, and adjusted the gibs, and added a couple of vacuum caps on the ends of the handles to cover those sharp threads protruding through the handles! I lost a bit of skin on both of my thumb knuckles before I figured that out.

I drilled 120 holes, a mix of .028, .054, .093, .125, and .250 across a 4" by 7" phenolic plate. I strictly went by my X, Y coordinates generated from PCB with a precision of .001" and used the (a bit hard to read) dial indicators on the Enco table. I set my zero point at one edge of the board, and to my surprise, everything lined up perfect with the PCB vias across the whole board.

Know lets just see how long this table will last!

Thanks to the group for all the advice.

Terry

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