Richard.
Member
- Messages
- 18,347
- Location
- Cambridgeshire
You’ve probably seen these on eBay. A guy from Norwich takes a pair of cheapo digi calipers. Strips and cleans them then modifies them to be a quick bolt on dro he makes a few brackets and bits that fit on the lathes existing points and you have a dro on a slide point.
I fancied a punt after talking to him as he told me if I wasn’t happy I could send em back so I thought what the heck and bought 2 of these kits for a shade over £100.
There is a lot of small parts to these and the supplied fitting instructions are not easy to understand I gave up on them in the end and just used logic and a picture to put them together which took less than 15 mins.
Now let’s start off with the negative. They are not posh calipers and you can see that from the cheap plastic bits. In fairness he has done a good job of stripping and cleaning them as they run smoothly and they are very accurate as they run dead true with the increments on the lathe slides.
The main carriage dro could of been longer really it does cover the complete stroke of the carriage but in 2 movements. You need to extend the bar it’s on to get the last 100mm but retract the bar to get the first 50mm if that makes sense. Not a big problem.
Now the good parts. For the money they do exactly what you want from them. They are dead accurate to use they are surprisingly ridged, they don’t interfere with anything on the lathe and I am going to find them incredibly useful.
I’ve used them about 5 or 6 times now and I’ve turned parts to great tolerances using only the dro as the measuring tool. Set Your zero and wind on your distance. Anyone with an ml7 or 10 fancies a cheap dro solution this could be the thing for you. It’s got my thumbs up.
I fancied a punt after talking to him as he told me if I wasn’t happy I could send em back so I thought what the heck and bought 2 of these kits for a shade over £100.
There is a lot of small parts to these and the supplied fitting instructions are not easy to understand I gave up on them in the end and just used logic and a picture to put them together which took less than 15 mins.
Now let’s start off with the negative. They are not posh calipers and you can see that from the cheap plastic bits. In fairness he has done a good job of stripping and cleaning them as they run smoothly and they are very accurate as they run dead true with the increments on the lathe slides.
The main carriage dro could of been longer really it does cover the complete stroke of the carriage but in 2 movements. You need to extend the bar it’s on to get the last 100mm but retract the bar to get the first 50mm if that makes sense. Not a big problem.
Now the good parts. For the money they do exactly what you want from them. They are dead accurate to use they are surprisingly ridged, they don’t interfere with anything on the lathe and I am going to find them incredibly useful.
I’ve used them about 5 or 6 times now and I’ve turned parts to great tolerances using only the dro as the measuring tool. Set Your zero and wind on your distance. Anyone with an ml7 or 10 fancies a cheap dro solution this could be the thing for you. It’s got my thumbs up.