- Joined
- Dec 25, 2011
- Messages
- 595
These are about the same thing as your Z DRO, Joe, but they fit the cheap part of the bill:
http://www.amazon.com/iGaging-DigiMAG-Magnetic-Digital-Readout/dp/B003JUII2A
As you can see, Quint Graphics sells them on Amazon. They have different lengths. Grizzly sells one or two sizes. Info: http://www.igaging.com/page97.html Well, not much info.
I searched and searched and finally found someone who used them on a mill. Guy said they were pretty good, but kept going to sleep and was annoying. These cost about the same as a long digital caliper on sale at HF, so I was going to go for it, then bought a knee mill. I did make a Z axis from a cheap caliper before I knew of these, and it worked OK, but as soon as I added the Z counter weight, so Z axis didn't totally suck, I found I was just reading the dial instead of the DRO. I never put it back on after belt conversion.
These are the ones I installed (3) and really like them.
Also installed the air spring kit from Little Machine Shop and it has been well worth it IMO.