Having played about with these for a few years on manual machinery, and spent grossly too much on them, attempting to get them to be stable, accurate and reliable, all I can say is ...

If they are going to be mounted anywhere they are liable to be close to swarf, dust or liquids, forget it.
They will be continually breaking down. I was lucky for a week to go by without having to strip one down and get it working again.

I have gone completely over to glass scales, both on lathe and mill, and the only place I use one of these is for upper z axis reading on the quill of my mill, well away from the things mentioned above.





I found that when running from an external supply, I played about with different values, and found I had to use a 22uf cap across the battery connections to prevent the display from jumping about to whatever reading it wanted to give, that was caused by interferance from the machine motor.



I bought a few of the spare cables (just the little rubber connector and 1mtr of cable to bare ends) about 5 years ago, and were about £1 each. From here, but they don't sell the cables any more, but they do sell the display boxes at a very reasonable price.

http://www.arceurotrade.co.uk/Catalo...gital-Readouts

My display was rigged by a friend to run from a wall wart, which got rid of battery power out of the display and read head.
To make the plugs more stable, a short length of toothpick or plastic rod under the four contact fingers keeps them much more rigid in the read head.

Been there, got the tee shirt AND baseball cap.
I wish you all the best in your efforts to cure the problems that have baffled a great many of us manual machinists for way too long.:cry:

Bogs