Fitting a Digital Readout to my Sieg SX1LP Mini Mill

[NickB]

Rob,

The downside to using a DRO is that you can start obsessing about 0.005mm. Sometimes I have to stop myself and say "Hey, how accurate do I really need this?" (Answer: nowhere near).

Nick

 

[adrian]

As I said each to their own

An inch in 7mm (fine scale or S7 ) is 0.5833 mm and you can do the feet and inches sums in your head so for example 1’2-and a half” is 14-and-a-half is 29 halves so type 29 * .5833 / 2 and so on.

I'm not sure why you're making it so complicated. Even easier using QCAD where you can just type out the "equation" as fractions of an inch when you enter a dimension so to use your example this will work in QCAD type 1' 2 1/2" * 7/12

Can’t be doing with fractional inches, 23/64” anyone?

Again it's simply what you are use to, I see that and think it's 1/64 less than 24/64, 24 is divisible by 8 so if you had to mark out 23/64" it is quite simply 1/64 less than 3/8" and my ruler has a graduation line for that, whereas the metric rule doesn't have a graduation mark for 9.128 mm. It's just very useful to be able to switch from one to the other as the situation dictates.

 

[simond]

As I said each to their own

I'm not sure why you're making it so complicated. Even easier using QCAD where you can just type out the "equation" as fractions of an inch when you enter a dimension so to use your example this will work in QCAD type 1' 2 1/2" * 7/12

Again it's simply what you are use to, I see that and think it's 1/64 less than 24/64, 24 is divisible by 8 so if you had to mark out 23/64" it is quite simply 1/64 less than 3/8" and my ruler has a graduation line for that, whereas the metric rule doesn't have a graduation mark for 9.128 mm. It's just very useful to be able to switch from one to the other as the situation dictates.

Yes, can do similar in SW, though I’ve not tried typing feet and inches.

I just have the number in my head and it’s a way of working that’s easy for me.

and yes, I’m old enough to remember furlongs and fathoms, poles and pecks. And I still avoid them!

 

[Rob Pulham]

Not feeling at my best since the bank holiday I have let this thread slip a little.

So where were we?

The only possible mounting for the read head on the X axis is the end of the Y axis table. To do this I employed a couple more offcuts of aluminium angle these slightly deeper in section than that used on the Y axis reade head.

The brackets needed to fit around the Y axis lead screw so needed a bit of shaping.







It did take a couple of tries to get a range of adjustment available in all the different elements of the Z shaped final mounting.

Having got this far with the mill assembled I couldn't put off taking the mill to bits any longer to drill the end of the Y axis table.













After that it was just a case of reassembling it.