ArcEuro X3

I cant honestly say Ive ever used the handwheel graduations on my mill (came with a DRO), but there have been Chinese machines with weird leadscrew pitches and mismatched graduations in the past. IIRC it was something like an imperial leadscrew with a metric dial, which doesnt quite add up. (factor of 127 somewhere). The other great thing about a DRO is the backlash in the leadscrew is not important anymore (DRO mounted to table measures table movement), so I tend to ignore it until it gets much worse that I would otherwise be able to live with :)

Dave

Where did you purchase the DRO from and how much work did you need to do to fit it to the machine?

In article , Mike writes

I got the bits and pieces from Chronos (they're pretty close to me).

Fitting it was a pretty simple process or making some spacers, a bar for the front of the machine and a mounting arm for the readout.

I went with DROs that were bigger then each axis, since I don't want them to be a limiting factor.

I faffed about for a while trying to fit the Z axis to the quill, then realised that this means the "arm" that joins the quill (rather than the milling head) to the DRO ends up unreasonably long. I settled for fitting it to the head, on the assumption that I really only use the quill movement for drilling.

A few ally 'L' plates to act as swarf guards and I'm happy with the result.