Transplanting A Mill Specific Dro To A Lathe?

I have a 2-axis mill specific DroPro's DRO, with magnetic scales, on my Bridgeport mill.

I am now considering a DRO for my 12x36 Grizzly G4003G lathe.

It occurs to me I could "transplant" the 2-axis DRO to the lathe and buy a new 3-axis DRO for the mill.

The downside is I'd have to live with the "mill specific" features of the DRO on the lathe.

Would this be ill advised?

I would call DROpros and talk to them about it, giving them the specific models of DRO and machines that you have. They are known to be very helpful, though I am quite sure they will also try to sell you something...

jmarkwolf said:

I have a 2-axis mill specific DroPro's DRO, with magnetic scales, on my Bridgeport mill.

I am now considering a DRO for my 12x36 Grizzly G4003G lathe.

It occurs to me I could "transplant" the 2-axis DRO to the lathe and buy a new 3-axis DRO for the mill.

The downside is I'd have to live with the "mill specific" features of the DRO on the lathe.

Would this be ill advised?

Click to expand...

The issue you will have is that the built-in functions are different between the mill and lathe versions.
With that said, I use a number of the functions on the mill DRO but very seldom use any functions on the lathe.
The read head for the cross slide is one micron I think because of the diameter measurement.

2 issues I can think of:
1) 2 axis mill DRO is likely X & Y; whereas, a 2 axis lathe DRO would likely be X & Z. So you'd have to get used to the mis-labeled axis.
2) A lathe specific DRO likely would have a user choice for the X axis graduations to represent either radius or diameter. Using a mill specific DRO would likely register actual movement which would be the cut from the radius and not the diameter. This may or may not match the graduations on your lathe dial.

Neither of these are insurmountable; however, they may take some getting used to.

HTH