# Quill DRO for the Lathe?  (Compound DRO)



## BobWarfield (Apr 16, 2008)

Well, it too a look of doing, but I finally came up with a DRO for my lathe that Cedge doesn't already have on his! LOL, just teasing!

I was facing our little flywheels for the Team Build and was seeing some funny business on lengths. So, I got to thinking about a set of cheap digital calipers I had that I particularly do not like and how I ought to chop them up and make a DRO out of them for my compound. The project is a lot like making a DRO for your mill's quill.

Anyway, I don't have any progress pictures because I just threw it together out of scraps. I made it easy to take of the machine, it just clamps in place, and it is primarily useful when you're set up to feed for facing and not with the compound at an angle.

It looks like this:







The two clamps are milled out of aluminum. The calipers are bolted to the underside of the top clamp. You then measure against the vertical reference bar to see what's doing. It didn't take much to knock it together. You'd want something more elegant if you were going to leave it mounted, but this worked well for my application and was ready to go after about 2 hours of fooling around. It has proven to be more accurate than the dial on the lathe as well.

You could also just rig up a plunger-style indicator on a mag base, but this was fun to play with. My plunger doesn't have much travel, else I might have used it.

Cheers,

BW


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## Brass_Machine (Apr 16, 2008)

Gonna have to do that. Got a production run of parts that I could use this on. I have a Harbor Freight about 5 min from the house...

Thanks Bob

Eric


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## Cedge (Apr 16, 2008)

Bob
Damn... just damn!.....LOL. At least I've got ya thinkin DRO's...eh?

Steve


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## BobWarfield (Apr 16, 2008)

Steve, you sure do!

I still keep thinking how nice a tailstock DRO would be. There goes another few hours one of these days...

Cheers,

BW


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## Cedge (Apr 17, 2008)

Bob
The tail stock DRO was just one of those things that sneaked up on me. I was drilling a hole and thinking what a pin in the arse it was to have to "guess" using the ax marks on the tail stock. I'd seen the dial indicator set up on line and thought it was sort of neat. Next thing I know I've got my dremel tool out and I'm whacking away at the remains of  a cheap Harbor Freight caliper I'd already sacrificed to extend the long scale on my lathe. The rest, as they say, is history. I use it constantly now. 

I'll have to share the dual use power feed set up that I just finished hacking together. It's another really handy lathe tool.

Steve


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## snowman (Apr 19, 2008)

looks like you drilled the jaw of the calipers, if so, how? Are they glass hard?


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## BobWarfield (Apr 20, 2008)

If these calipers were hardened at all, they weren't hardened very much. An ordinary screw machine bit did the job, no problems. Used a cutoff on an air grinder to trim the ID points off.

Cheers,

BW


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