Hi Everyone,
I just mounted a Chinese iGaging (clone) DRO on my lathe. I picked up two of them for around $65 from ebay, but you can also get them from Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/iGaging-Magne...e=UTF8&qid=1382818895&sr=1-2&keywords=igaging
I only got one axis done so far but it worked great! These things are awesome, I cut down my working time from 40 minutes per part to just 15 minutes with only one slide installed. It will be much better when I get the cross-slide gauge installed, and even better when I CNC convert my lathe.
I can verify that the repeatability of the gauges is quite good (some people on other forums elsewhere have complained about that but I saw pretty much perfect repeatability). Here is a picture of the mounted DRO:
View attachment DSC03709.JPGView attachment DSC03710.JPG
Here's a picture of the slide after use (I think I will put some tape to cover up the holes.)
View attachment DSC03708.JPG
I screwed in one side of the mount as you can see, and I just crazy glued the other mount to the slide. At first I thought that might not hold, but the crazy glue seems to be holding fine.
Now, the problem I have is trying to figure out how to mount the cross slide gauge. Here's a picture of the slide, and any tips would be much appreciated.
View attachment DSC03711.JPG
I'm building an electronic interface to the iGaging slides so that I can ultimately use it to servo control the lathe for CNC using a Beaglebone Black. I'm going the closed loop servo as an experiment instead of using steppers. In the meantime, I'll probably build a DRO interface similar to what Yuriy did - http://www.yuriystoys.com/p/android-dro.html - but using the Beaglebone Black instead. Here are some pictures of that work so far:
View attachment DSC03705.JPG
Connecting a signal tap to find out what the signals look like between the controller and the scale.
View attachment DSC03702.JPG
Signals to and from the iGaging DRO.
View attachment DSC03712.JPG
My setup to attempt to read those signals using a Beaglebone Black.
You can also see more detailed attempts on my blog at http://exadler.blogspot.com.
I'll probably get a few boards made of the final product that will at the very least give you a DRO reading. If anyone is interested, let me know, and I'll get a couple extra boards made at the same time (it's only low cost if I order a larger quantity at a single time. e.g. it will cost $79 for 5 boards, and $129 for 50 boards).
Paul Tan.
http://www.exadler.com
http://exadler.blogspot.com
I just mounted a Chinese iGaging (clone) DRO on my lathe. I picked up two of them for around $65 from ebay, but you can also get them from Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/iGaging-Magne...e=UTF8&qid=1382818895&sr=1-2&keywords=igaging
I only got one axis done so far but it worked great! These things are awesome, I cut down my working time from 40 minutes per part to just 15 minutes with only one slide installed. It will be much better when I get the cross-slide gauge installed, and even better when I CNC convert my lathe.
I can verify that the repeatability of the gauges is quite good (some people on other forums elsewhere have complained about that but I saw pretty much perfect repeatability). Here is a picture of the mounted DRO:
View attachment DSC03709.JPGView attachment DSC03710.JPG
Here's a picture of the slide after use (I think I will put some tape to cover up the holes.)
View attachment DSC03708.JPG
I screwed in one side of the mount as you can see, and I just crazy glued the other mount to the slide. At first I thought that might not hold, but the crazy glue seems to be holding fine.
Now, the problem I have is trying to figure out how to mount the cross slide gauge. Here's a picture of the slide, and any tips would be much appreciated.
View attachment DSC03711.JPG
I'm building an electronic interface to the iGaging slides so that I can ultimately use it to servo control the lathe for CNC using a Beaglebone Black. I'm going the closed loop servo as an experiment instead of using steppers. In the meantime, I'll probably build a DRO interface similar to what Yuriy did - http://www.yuriystoys.com/p/android-dro.html - but using the Beaglebone Black instead. Here are some pictures of that work so far:
View attachment DSC03705.JPG
Connecting a signal tap to find out what the signals look like between the controller and the scale.
View attachment DSC03702.JPG
Signals to and from the iGaging DRO.
View attachment DSC03712.JPG
My setup to attempt to read those signals using a Beaglebone Black.
You can also see more detailed attempts on my blog at http://exadler.blogspot.com.
I'll probably get a few boards made of the final product that will at the very least give you a DRO reading. If anyone is interested, let me know, and I'll get a couple extra boards made at the same time (it's only low cost if I order a larger quantity at a single time. e.g. it will cost $79 for 5 boards, and $129 for 50 boards).
Paul Tan.
http://www.exadler.com
http://exadler.blogspot.com
