Ditron vs Sino...wich is better in your opinion

[pontiac428]

Why do you think there is a Z axis? There are only two connectors on the right?

here are my assumptions: X and Y on the right, U, Z and RPM (k) on the top, power bottom left, screen bottom center, keypad is a combination of the black 10 pitch headers. Not sure what the 9 pin is on the right lower, maybe that is the PRG header without RS232. I could tell for sure if it were in my hands and under good light. It's about what I expected.

You can see they saved money by omitting discrete serial I/O drivers on the connectors for the scales. That explains why the standard RS232 pinout doesn't work when mixing and matching manufacturers, it's not used or needed with these low power read heads.

 

[rwm]

I think you are probably right. Hey I would rather have my Y axis labled as Z. I still don't know why they have this wrong. If I swap ports could the Z axis show up? Or is this software determined? I expect the latter. I guess I should have bought a 3 axis and disabled the Y axis?

 

[pontiac428]

I think you are probably right. Hey I would rather have my Y axis labled as Z. I still don't know why they have this wrong. If I swap ports could the Z axis show up? Or is this software determined? I expect the latter. I guess I should have bought a 3 axis and disabled the Y axis?

I'm not sure, I'll have to go play with mine. I did not order the RPM option, but the configuration menu still comes up.

As for changing the axes, just swap the connectors as you want them to be, the unit doesn't care. You'll want that stuff correct when you do hole patterns or other built-in geometry that needs to know how the axes are related. It's about like picking a sign +/- to indicate moving the table left, unimportant to the grand scheme, but critical to the operation.

Do you have an alternate to the usual standard? The norm being where if you hold your left hand out in a thumbs up, extend your forefinger ahead of you, and point your middle finger to your right, the thumb is z, the forefinger y, and middle is x, and the way each finger points is the positive direction.

 

[rwm]

Do you have an alternate to the usual standard? The norm being where if you hold your left hand out in a thumbs up, extend your forefinger ahead of you, and point your middle finger to your right, the thumb is z, the forefinger y, and middle is x, and the way each finger points is the positive direction.

That would apply to a mill. I don't think that is correct for a lathe. I have read that the Z axis is always the spindle axis therefore a lathe should have X and Z. I have seen some 2 axis DROs with the second axis called Y/Z.

 

[pontiac428]

Lathe vs mill is just a mode, the heads are the same.

I just toured the v1.0 manual for the D80 I have. You can enable and disable all 5 channels, and the manual confirms all 5 are populated no matter which version you have. That means you can plug the ribbon cables in the case into the ports on the board with the names you want to use (X,Z or whatevs), then enable the X and Z channels in settings. Bye bye Y.

Don't know how it affects the utility tools. It's just a name for an axis at the end of the day.

 

[rwm]

I looked in the settings on mine and all I could see was the X and Y axes. There was no Z axis to activate. Also, X and Y are physically printed on the buttons but that is less important.
"all 5 are populated " this is not the case on my DRO. I can only see 2 axes in Settings
Actually after playing with it, I can only set the number of axes to 1 or 2. If I set it to 1 it deletes the Y axis. I cannot pick which axis label I want to keep. I'm guessing that if I had the 3 axis and set it to 2 axes, it would delete the Z and I would be right where I am now. I suppose I can just not hook up the Y axis and have it read 0 all the time? Seems like a shame to have this high tech DRO and then have to put tape labels on it!

 

[pontiac428]

In the DRO settings where you choose the mode (mill, lathe, etc) and interface language, there is a field labeled axis that you can edit. It's the number of axes, try changing it from 2 to 4 or whatever.

I reckon you might be stuck with the axis labels that are on the keypad. I'm a little baffled that they chose to make the axis names hard on a product that is supposed to be universal.

 

[rwm]

I assume mean this menu:

That highlighted box can only be set to 1 or 2.
I wonder if I could sell this at a discount and go for the 3 axis? This may seem silly but it won't be so silly when I turn the wrong handwheel in flight...

 

[pontiac428]

Yeah, that's the window. I was going to paste the text from the manual on this, but apparently selecting text isn't part of Acrobat Reader anymore.

 

[mksj]

You should be able to set the machine mode to mill and have 4 axis, in lathe mode it probably defaults to 2.