I got a Sino SDS2-2L DRO many years ago that was installed on my mill since I needed it there. It wasn’t a mill version, so after getting a lathe that is worthy of a DRO, I am finally getting around to installing and using it.
I have been playing around with tool offsets as well as the subsidiary zeros to see if that might work well for repetitive work. I programmed my tool offsets and they are reasonably close, I think I need to fine tune some of them, but it got me thinking, which side of the parting or grooving tools do you prefer for your Z offset? For parting, it would make sense to have the right hand edge be at zero so that when you select that tool, you would go the distance in you need to part it off without worrying about the insert thickness. Would you do the same for grooving tools, or is there a valid case to use the left side of the tool as zero? I was thinking for consistency to do both the same, but I am curious how anyone else using this feature does it.
One thing I played with was doing chamfers at certain points on the shaft, it was pretty cool being able to program a zero point to get the correct chamfer size, at least what looked correct with a caliper and a Mk 1 eyeball, without having to do calculations in my head. I need to play around with it some more to see if it is worth the effort setting these up, but so far is a nice feature.
I have been playing around with tool offsets as well as the subsidiary zeros to see if that might work well for repetitive work. I programmed my tool offsets and they are reasonably close, I think I need to fine tune some of them, but it got me thinking, which side of the parting or grooving tools do you prefer for your Z offset? For parting, it would make sense to have the right hand edge be at zero so that when you select that tool, you would go the distance in you need to part it off without worrying about the insert thickness. Would you do the same for grooving tools, or is there a valid case to use the left side of the tool as zero? I was thinking for consistency to do both the same, but I am curious how anyone else using this feature does it.
One thing I played with was doing chamfers at certain points on the shaft, it was pretty cool being able to program a zero point to get the correct chamfer size, at least what looked correct with a caliper and a Mk 1 eyeball, without having to do calculations in my head. I need to play around with it some more to see if it is worth the effort setting these up, but so far is a nice feature.