# Quill DRO Help



## bluwolf (May 30, 2009)

This question (okay, questions) is aimed at Daniel (gadget lover) in particular, and possibly Will who just got a similar 8x30 mill. But I'd appreciate help from anyone who has input.

Where do I start?

I ordered a vertical DRO from Grizzly to use on the quill. For starters, I know it's too long. I read somwhere that they can be cut shorter. What would be the best way/tool to do that?

Daniel, I saw a couple of pics of your quill dro. I like the way yours seems to be directly over the depth stop, so as not to get in the way of the quill lock. But I can't figure out how you mounted it.

Did you remove the depth stop threaded rod and block so you could fix the readout to it? And if so, how does that threaded rod come out? Is it threaded into the casting or pressed in?

I've probably got more questions but that would get me started.

Thanks,
Mike


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## gadget_lover (May 30, 2009)

It's really much easier than it sounds... unless you get anal about it.  Then it takes forever to get it just right.

The stop block on my mill was already drilled and tapped to mount a small vertical cylinder. As close as I can tell, the face of the cylinder was to be used with a dial indicator as a reference point. I took that off and replaced it will an L shaped bracket the same height as the back of the DRO head.

The back of the DRO head was already drilled and tapped for mounting, so I just had to duplicate that pattern on the bracket and it then bolted right up.

The threaded depth stop rod passes through the stop block without touching it. The rod unscrews from the bottom where it goes through the casting. Mine does anyway. It has a slot in the bottom of the rod for a screwdriver. I lubed mine in advance and used a power drill/driver to back it out. The thread is 20 tpi and the rod is 5 inches long, so that's a lot of twisting with a regular screw driver.

I cut the DRO shaft to the proper length on my trusty old HF metal cutting bandsaw. It is not hardened so it cut real fast and clean. It took, literally, seconds.

I used the quill itself as a reference point when I aligned the DRO shaft with the quill. You can see the quill through the hole in the casting behind the depth stop. A piece of scrap cut to about the right length was used to measure top and bottom. Once it was parallel I lock-tited all the screws and tightened them.

The support bracket on the bottom will slide in and out, so I simply aligned it with the stock bracket and fastened it with a screw. The support bracket was then secured by a nut (on the stop rod) to hold it. I later drilled a hole in the casting and added a screw to hold it. That lets me remove the nut for an extra 1/4 inch movement.

I checked for free movement at every step.

I also have a bracket ( screwed to the underside of the pully guard ) at the top that really is un-necessary. I'll probably remove it some day.

I still have to round off the corners on the lower bracket and paint it. Then I will probably re-do the lower support bracket since it no longer needs to go around the stop rod.

Daniel


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## wquiles (May 30, 2009)

Mounting a Quill DRO is on my "list" of things to do, but the real important thing here is:

PICTURES - WE NEED LOTS OF PICTURES :devil:


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## gadget_lover (May 30, 2009)

OK, OK. I hear and understand. I just took a bunch of pictures and will clean them up and post them tomorrow.

I almost never remember to take pictures while I'm building things. I'm too much of a linear thinker. As I complete one step I'm already mentally working out the next step.

Daniel


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## bluwolf (May 31, 2009)

I'm with Will. I need pictures. After your reply I went out and looked at mine. I don't have the screwdriver slot in the threaded rod. And I don't have pre-drilled and tapped holes in the block. I can see this is going to be another PITA. At least it won't be as big a PITA as the powerfeed mod which still isn't done. And won't be until I get a bigger lathe. Funny how that works.

Mike


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## gadget_lover (May 31, 2009)

As I looked through the pictures, I realized why I had stopped posting as many as I used to. Close-up pictures bring out every flaw and spec of dirt and dust. Things I'd never noticed before leap out from the screen. It makes me want to strip everything down and clean it and rebuild it. I have neither the time nor space to do that. Very dis-heartening. 

 But that does not keep me from enjoying the tools. I have a short memory.. 

So here are some pictures of the quill DRO installation. Please disregard the dings and chips and oil and grease and splashes of house paint.

- - -
For the purposes of this post, I'll call the long metal part of the DRO the scale and the bulky black part the reader.  The quill stop block is the big metal block with the threaded rod through it.

My first task was to determine the location for the DRO. I wanted to be able to use the stops and the quill lock, so the space directly in front of the quill was the best choice for me. I could have put it between the rapid quill feed handle on the right and the quill lock, but the bracket would have been awkward (many angles) and there were no flat surfaces to mount it.

This is the DRO in place.







This shows that the clearance is not as close as it appears. It also gives a sense of scale. I figured that I needed to get to the stop nuts more than I needed clearance for the fingertips. When down-feeding I'm usually using only fingertips anyway.





The DRO I bought came with a small bracket top and bottom. The bracket shows an interesting manufacturing design. It looks like it is milled from a single direction. The pocket for the DRO scale was milled with a small diameter mill and then a later pass with a band saw took out the corners. This meant that they did not have to change the orientation of the part as it was being milled.







My second task was to figure out the travel of the DRO reader. Would I need to cut away part of the pulley shroud to make room? Would it go down far enough? Which end of the scale did I need to trim off?

I decided that I could mount it in such a way that the top does not go through the shroud and the bottom of the scale does not extend beyond the bottom of the casting (much). The whole length of the scale can be read by the DRO, so I cut off the bottom since that was the part protruding through the bracket when I marked it with the pen.

The brackets are made from 1/8 inch thick aluminum angle. I checked them to ensure that the 90 degree bend was true. The brackets were roughly shaped using a thin-kerf bandsaw for wood and finished by hand.

The reader is bigger than the stop block. In these two pictures you will see that the reader is not centered (vertically) with the stop block. The reader is actually a bit above the stop so that it does not protrude below the casting when it's down all the way.

The second photo shows the bracket screwed to the back of the reader. The holes precisely match the layout of the holes in the reader and were countersunk to minimize clearance problems. 

















The other end of the bracket is not so pretty. I used what I had on hand to fasten it to the stop block. The through holes for the screws were elongated so I could shift it in or out till the scale was parallel to the travel of the quill.






The bottom bracket was initially a piece of aluminum angle with a 5/8 inch U shaped hole. It went on the threaded rod and a nut held it in place. The U let me move it in and out as needed. Since the scale was held vertically by the bracket on the reader, all I needed to do was to slide the bracket out till it was parallel and tighten the nut. I've since removed the nut and put a screw through the bracket to hold it to the casting, since I was losing 3/8 inch of travel to the extra nut.











And of course the view from below, just to show there is nothing up my sleeve. The slot is in the bottom of the quill stop support rod.






And now the fruits of my labor; 3 and 1/8 inch of travel.







Still to do.... The bottom bracket needs to be flipped over so it is on the bottom of the casting, not the top. The brackets should be painted. The phillips screws should be replaced with socket head cap screws. The sharp edges need to be taken off the OEM bracket. The bottom OEM bracket is crooked. I need to check all the screws to ensure that I did remember to use lock-tite. The very top bracket that I put on the underside of the pulley shroud will go away, as it's not needed. Most of this will never be done since it works properly just the way it is.


And that's all she wrote. 

Daniel


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## wquiles (May 31, 2009)

Awesome job Daniel - thanks much for the pictures. They help explain it much better. I now have to see how mine looks like so that I can do the same to my mill


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## gadget_lover (May 31, 2009)

When (if) I change the bottom bracket I will need to mill a flat on the bottom of the casting. I've considered all sorts of ways to do that.

After a bit of thought, I realized that all I need do is to clamp a lathe tool in the vice and gently shave the casting by running the table back and forth 20 or 30 times. Sort of like using an inverted shaper.

I used a similar technique to re-cut the splines on a threaded rod that had been damaged by vise grips. I put a properly ground tool in the vice, the screw in the collet and aligned by eye. A quick stoke of the quill for each groove and the mess was cleaned up enough for a handle to fit again.


Daniel


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## gadget_lover (May 31, 2009)

wquiles said:


> Awesome job Daniel - thanks much for the pictures. They help explain it much better. I now have to see how mine looks like so that I can do the same to my mill



It's nothing compared to some of the posts done by the rest of you artistic photograhpers. I'm always impressed.

It is no wonder that the followup post is more understandable. The original post was only 426 words. The followup has 11 pictures and 891 words. Every one knows the second post is is 27.9131 times better. That's assuming an exchange rate implied by "A picture is worth a thousand words". 

I should point out that pictures only tell you "what is", but not "why". The 891 words therefor take on a disproportionately high value.

Daniel


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## wquiles (Jun 1, 2009)

gadget_lover said:


> It is no wonder that the followup post is more understandable. The original post was only 426 words. The followup has 11 pictures and 891 words. Every one knows the second post is is 27.9131 times better. That's assuming an exchange rate implied by "A picture is worth a thousand words".
> 
> I should point out that pictures only tell you "what is", but not "why". The 891 words therefor take on a disproportionately high value.


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## StrikerDown (Jun 1, 2009)

wquiles said:


>


 Plus 1


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## gadget_lover (Jun 1, 2009)

Here at CPF, we strive to entertain as well as to educate.

The fact that we manage to create tool lust and corrupt your finances at the same time is just frosting on the cake.

Daniel


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## gadget_lover (Jun 2, 2009)

Like I said... I forget about the imperfections unless make the mistake of taking pictures....

So today I checked the screws and even straightened the bottom bracket and rounded all sharp edges. The touch up paint was not perfect, but until my new glasses arrive I can't really tell the difference in the paint till I take a picture.






So there.






Daniel


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## mdocod (Jun 2, 2009)

This thread has me gleefully chuckling to myself... great stuff guys 

I'm realizing now, having the DRO on my quill, that had it not been included with the machine, it would have been the first modification necessary to do anything I do with any reasonable degree of efficiency.

Makes everything really quick and easy, touch-off-zero-GO.....


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## bluwolf (Jun 2, 2009)

Daniel,

Great stuff. I appreciate it. Like I mentioned, I'm missing a couple of the details you have on yours, like the screwdriver slot on the threaded rod and the tapped holes on the stop block

If I was sure the rod was threaded I would put a slot in it with a die grinder wheel because it protrudes down slightly whereas yours seems to be flush with the casting. After that it seems like there are two bolts holding the stop block to the spindle.

Mike


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## gadget_lover (Jun 2, 2009)

My pleasure bluwolf.

The threaded rod should screw out from either the top or the bottom.

On mine, the top of the rod is cut down so it will fit into a hole in the top casting. It's inserted from the bottom and driven up. Yours should show the same diameter above and below the bracket if it is to screw out that way.

The DRO quill has been much more expensive than I realized. The total cost of the project has now around $550.

The bracket materials: $1
The DRO (ebay-800watt): $34
Shipping: $8
Screws (7): $1.50
Exilim FH-20: $440
Fedex overnight: $25
Memory card: $39

I had forgotten how much of a hassle closeup pictures were without a good macro. That will not be a problem next time. 



Daniel


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## mdocod (Jun 3, 2009)

gadget_lover said:


> .... The total cost of the project has now around ...
> 
> Daniel



 :huh:

I felt like I was paying a lot of extra $$$ for *basically* that one feature, guess I actually got a pretty good deal. The SX3 was priced $400 more than the X3. The only "significant" feature I was getting that would effect my everyday usage was the DRO... I really struggled with that extra cost at the time but am no longer bothered by it... 

Your experience in this project has helped me sleep a little better 

-Eric


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## StrikerDown (Jun 3, 2009)

gadget_lover said:


> Exilim FH-20: $440
> 
> 
> 
> Daniel




Nice camera!

But I think you need to charge that to your CPF account instead of the machining budget!


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## gadget_lover (Jun 3, 2009)

I was wondering if anyone would catch the fact that the Exilim is a camera. This model takes super slow motion video, so I hope to be able to get pictures of chips flying. Maybe I can show what to expect when parting... that kind of thing.

That puts it in my machining budget. I resisted buying a new camera until I made the pictures in this post. I was not at all happy with the pictures.


Eric, I have about $600 in DROs for all 4 axis of my mill. X,Y and Knee are optical encoders. The quill is a standalone capacitance encoder.

Daniel


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## StrikerDown (Jun 3, 2009)

gadget_lover said:


> I was wondering if anyone would catch the fact that the Exilim is a camera. This model takes super slow motion video, so I hope to be able to get pictures of chips flying. Maybe I can show what to expect when parting... that kind of thing.
> 
> Daniel



It is a weird name for a camera... I have a little snapshot 12.1 MGPixel Exilim. Otherwise it probably would have flown high over my head! I have figured out you have a weird sense of humor... kinda like mine!

I will enjoy those vids! Sounds like a cool feature.


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