JCS900 scale problem

[sundown57]

I broke a scale on my JCS900 DRO so went online and bought one same length from vevor. Looks the same but doesn't work on my JCS head. I don't see much info on the website saying what heads they are compatible with. Does anyone know how i can figure out what one i need?

 

[ErichKeane]

You'll probably have to figure out the pinout of the connector from the old one, and re-wire the new one to match. This is a half-decent tutorial, though you might have to do a bit better for the communication pins with the chinese DROs: https://www.touchdro.com/resources/scales/glass/glass-scale-pinout.html

 

[sundown57]

i took the cover off the reader head, but it is sealed with a very hard black rubbery stuff that i can not get off. second, the head I want to use only has 4 wires. the original one had 5.

 

[ErichKeane]

i took the cover off the reader head, but it is sealed with a very hard black rubbery stuff that i can not get off. second, the head I want to use only has 4 wires. the original one had 5.

Do you mean they 'potted' the chip? If so, figuring out which is which is going to be that much more troublesome... Are both potted, or just the new one?

4 vs 5 isn't a big deal, you end up losing some of the error-correction, but if you figure out the right place for the pins it'll still work.