# Touch Dro Enhanced



## Bamban (Sep 4, 2015)

Over the last few months I have been busy putting the 10x24 lathe in working order, considering its condition when I got it, no motor, and no chuck, I am fairly happy it is now running and has been problem free . Now it has a 3P motor, VFD, P & B 4J. The next enhancement for it is the DRO, I wanted to go inexpensive, thus the Wifi Touch DRO was given the nod. Initially I bought the Absolute iGaging, but it is incompatible with the Touch DRO had to buy the aluminum scale version to get the project going.

The DRO installation is far from complete, in fact I just have a 6 inch scale mocked up with magnets attaching it to the apron and the V way. I have not decided as what scale to use in its final config. I started this thread to show what we have done with the Touch DRO.

One of our shooters is a retired IBM engineer, I gave him the challenge to come up with the way to stop the spindle when the DRO reaches the Zero Set, the ZS that could be set anywhere the length of the carriage travel. Though he never programmed any Android stuff and in fact he had to acquire some material to learn the Android, he took on the challenge. The initial results are very promising, tried the system on the cross slide, tried it on threading, and boring  and it seems to be good enough to run +/- 0.001

Here are a couple of videos I took  while testing and shaking down the system.
















To use the system, run the carriage where you want the cutter to stop, press the ZS, retract and return carriage to the starting point. Start the spindle and press the DRO audio icon, start the feed, and watch. Upon reaching the intended stop and the spindle stops, retract cutter, and return the carriage to starting point. Press the audio icon to reset the latched relay in the Arduino system, in turn resets the VFD stop command. The Arduino relay NC contacts are in series with the VFD  Stop switch NC contacts. Either set of contacts will stop the spindle.

I've been in conversation with mksj from our forum,, who drew and wired the control system for the VFD, the whole time we were developing this project, talking about the pros and cons between this system and the proximity/limit switch configuration. I think the latter would be more robust in the long run.

Y'all have a nice weekend.


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## RJSakowski (Sep 4, 2015)

Bamban said:


> I started this thread to show what we have done with the Touch DRO.
> 
> One of our shooters is a retired IBM engineer, I gave him the challenge to come up with the way to stop the spindle when the DRO reaches the Zero Set, the ZS that could be set anywhere the length of the carriage travel. Though he never programmed any Android stuff and in fact he had to acquire some material to learn the Android, he took on the challenge. The initial results are very promising, tried the system on the cross slide, tried it on threading, and boring  and it seems to be good enough to run +/- 0.001



This looks like a promising improvement.  I will be looking forward to hearing more about the hardware and software.  Thanks for sharing!

Bob


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