Last year I crashed my mill pretty bad, breaking the leadscrew and one of the digital read out scales in the process.
I decided it was safer to put a 1200 scale in place of the 1000 on the X as it was a bit tight on the outer limits so swapped in a longer scale to address it.
I kept the remains of the sinpo brand 1m scale round wondering if I could machine a new casing for the read head and find a ribbon supplier, in a severe case of short arms and deep pockets syndrome, and had a go at using kynar hook up wire between the two circuits inside the dro and that didn't work.
Then on ebay recently was a very short easson scale from a private seller, and I got it for the opening price. Cheaper than even the replacement read heads from cbr electronics by quite a way.
After a squint at the plug to check the pinouts, it was plugged into my Sinpo brand dro and it worked fine. Yuriy's dro has the pinouts if you need them for yourself :-
http://www.yuriystoys.com/2014/01/connecting-glass-dro-scales-to.html
But 150mm scale isnt that useful, so I removed the easson head from the tiny scale, and used it to rebuild the 1m long one and it works fine, this post is just a confirmation of the rumor that "the chinese dro's are all made in the same factory" with my actual real world sample of 1 first hand case. The rebuilt 1000mm scale is now going on another machine improvement project. To put it in perspective, the 1000mm scale costs 4x the price of a 150.
For all their fragility, I've never seen a glass scale with broken glass, it always seems to be the read heads tore out in a crash. So before you bin one or if you can fish a poorly one out someones bin, take it apart for a look, you might be as lucky as I have.
And another small thing worth mentioning, when I stripped the 150 down, one of the end caps was loose on the main scale body and this is where the scale mounts. This might have lead to a inaccuracy. I had a chat with the seller and its never been out the packaging, so might be worth checking if you get a chinese dro kit the end caps are on tight enough.
I decided it was safer to put a 1200 scale in place of the 1000 on the X as it was a bit tight on the outer limits so swapped in a longer scale to address it.
I kept the remains of the sinpo brand 1m scale round wondering if I could machine a new casing for the read head and find a ribbon supplier, in a severe case of short arms and deep pockets syndrome, and had a go at using kynar hook up wire between the two circuits inside the dro and that didn't work.
Then on ebay recently was a very short easson scale from a private seller, and I got it for the opening price. Cheaper than even the replacement read heads from cbr electronics by quite a way.
After a squint at the plug to check the pinouts, it was plugged into my Sinpo brand dro and it worked fine. Yuriy's dro has the pinouts if you need them for yourself :-
http://www.yuriystoys.com/2014/01/connecting-glass-dro-scales-to.html
But 150mm scale isnt that useful, so I removed the easson head from the tiny scale, and used it to rebuild the 1m long one and it works fine, this post is just a confirmation of the rumor that "the chinese dro's are all made in the same factory" with my actual real world sample of 1 first hand case. The rebuilt 1000mm scale is now going on another machine improvement project. To put it in perspective, the 1000mm scale costs 4x the price of a 150.
For all their fragility, I've never seen a glass scale with broken glass, it always seems to be the read heads tore out in a crash. So before you bin one or if you can fish a poorly one out someones bin, take it apart for a look, you might be as lucky as I have.
And another small thing worth mentioning, when I stripped the 150 down, one of the end caps was loose on the main scale body and this is where the scale mounts. This might have lead to a inaccuracy. I had a chat with the seller and its never been out the packaging, so might be worth checking if you get a chinese dro kit the end caps are on tight enough.
