Tidied my mill up

**Robin Hewitt** · 15-06-2008

Originally Posted by irving2008

I was thinking on the lines of hacking apart a couple of cheap 200mm digital vernier units - that would give 0.01mm resolution (.0004thou)

The cheap chinese digital scale resolves 20480 lines per inch but it's hard to get the jitter down to less than 3 counts. I simply dump the bottom two bits and accept a stable 5120 counts per inch (approx .005mm res). Don't forget to clean the grit out if you buy one :D

It's 2x24 bit two's compliment, here's a link...

http://www.yadro.de/digital-scale/protocol.html

**irving2008** · 16-06-2008

Originally Posted by Robin Hewitt

The cheap chinese digital scale resolves 20480 lines per inch but it's hard to get the jitter down to less than 3 counts. I simply dump the bottom two bits and accept a stable 5120 counts per inch (approx .005mm res). Don't forget to clean the grit out if you buy one :D

It's 2x24 bit two's compliment, here's a link...

http://www.yadro.de/digital-scale/protocol.html

Thanks for that. Do you have a link to the 'scales' themselves? I was thinking on the the lines of creating a DRO for the lathe initially, then possibly CNC-ing it later but was being put off by the high prices charged for DROs generally. I have the means to write the software for myself and plenty of hardware available.

Incidentally have you seen http://www.mysmart-tools.com/. Seems like a work in progress, but interesting nonetheless...

**Robin Hewitt** · 16-06-2008

I shopped around then bought my scales from Allendale

http://www.allendale-hosting.co.uk/

I made the mistake of buying a vertical mount scale for the Z axis, found you can't turn the display on without resetting the whole thing, I thought this might turn out to be a pain when testing so I dumped it.

Allendale also do pretty anodized aluminium covers for scales. Means you can't see the display but does make them drip proof. The end mounts for the scales are a bit naff in pressed steel, so I remade them in aluminium.

OTOH they do work...