# Machine DRO sensors on Taig



## mwilkes (Apr 17, 2013)

I bought a couple of magnetic linear encoders from machine-dro.co.uk. They have 5 micron resolution. I'm very happy...


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## MawitÃ¶ (Apr 17, 2013)

wo wo very nice, as a taig lathe owner to another congrants looks very nice, could you post more pics on how you mounted the system? how much did you end up expending ?

Thanks for sharing


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## mwilkes (Apr 17, 2013)

I stuck strips of self-adhesive magnetic tape to the cross slide and the back of the lathe bed, then attached the sensors with fairly shoddy brackets... 












Tape was £5.63 inc VAT per 100mm from machine-dro
Sensors were £138.85 inc VAT each. They do more expensive ones with a resolution of 1 micron, and cheaper ones (£78.08 inc VAT) with 25 micron resolution.
I bought two mini displays ( £81.65 inc VAT each) for versatility, but they do nice dual display for £135.60 which I probably should have gone for.


Expensive, but I'm *so pleased* with the results!


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## MawitÃ¶ (Apr 17, 2013)

Thanks for sharing, well yes expensive they are, but for small machines like ours is the best setup i´ve seen so far.


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## ZipSnipe (Apr 17, 2013)

That second pic looks like potential problems down the road as evidence of the chips in the pic shows.

 Maybe mounting that strip upside down on some L channel and then the sensor staying put.

But yeah real nice set up, I like how the readouts are nice and bright!!!


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## Davo J (Apr 17, 2013)

Very nice, will change the way you machine for the better.
I agree which what is said above about a cover. 
Also that reader is on an angle, if the bolts are a neat fit in the reader that you cant adjust it, machine down the bolts a little where they pass through the reader. This will give a little wiggle room to move it around.

Dave


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## mwilkes (Apr 18, 2013)

Thanks for comments - I'll see how it goes without a cover first - I like (relatively) easy access to the gib adjusters, and it's easy enough to wipe the swarf off. Since it's magnetic tape anyway swarf'll just find its way under the cover and it'll be harder to clean out. 

It has already changed my life  Being able to turn stuff down to diameter without continually re-measuring and taking off a thou at a time until I've gone past where I should've gone is just amazing...


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## MawitÃ¶ (Apr 18, 2013)

In case some of you are interested in electronics also, here´s a link to a DIY magnetic linear encoder.

https://www.synthetos.com/magnetic-linear-encoder-and-it-works/

this one is less precise 15um but interesting nontheless


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## mwilkes (Apr 18, 2013)

I actually made a decoder for the machine-dro sensors using Arduino for a different project (a guitar fretboard cutter) - so if anybody feels like rolling their own I can help out with code for a HTCL 2022 quadrature decoder chip - turned out to be pretty accurate


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