Winter tip

I wasn't greatly pleased when ones of the reader heads failed on my Newall lathe DRO. It seemed to be temperature related or a least related to temperature cycling, I suspect a solder joint failure but the items is completely potted as it can work under water. Warming it up could bring it back to life but wasn't practical so it had to be replaced. The scales are cheap, being bearings in a tube (a bit simplistic) but the reader head is not. That was the 2nd failure as the display also failed, a Newall tech mentioned they are prone to that if subjected to vibration as it can cause the power supply chip leads to fail, a bit poor for the class of kit I think. It did fail when I was doing an operation with a slitting saw that caused some vibration but the unit was mounted in a common location off the back of the headstock and I would consider that the normal operation of my lathe shouldn't be the cause of such a failure.

If it was potted, there's no way it should have failed due to moderate vibration. I'd be looking to demand a replacement!

Mark Rand RTFM

Mark,

Maybe I should have given more detail. The reader head, which is potted, failed in a way that may have indicated thermal cycling as an issue but the display head failed at a separate time and isn't potted. Still I understand that the normal location for the lathe DRO display is on the headstock and should be capable of with standing normal levels of vibration. The occasion it failed was unusual in that the slitting saw operation was causing some chattering but the overall operation was short, maybe an hour. In addition to these failures the Newall DRO has suffered occasional glitches trashing the linear compensation even with the latest firmware, luckily noticeable as the effected display value is on another planet, not even in the ball park. The first fault occurrence of the display power supply happened at about 5 year occasion use, not day in day out, the reader head at about 6 year so both outside warranty. I compare this to the Sony Millman unit on my BP which is now about 14-15 years old and I've had it for 13-14 years and it has never given any problems and some operations have made the arm on which it sits vibrate like the Newall did without failure.

moderate

value is

occurrence

IIRC the Newall scales are guaranteed for life

AWEM

Presumably "for life" means until they stop working...?

Regards, Tony

The scales maybe, they're the tube with the balls in, the reader heads are 1 year or 3 years depending on type. The analogue ones which can only be used with Newall displays are 3 years, the digital RS422 differential quadrature ones I have are 1 year as they can be used with other makers equipment, but in my case aren't.