DRO on my HF Mini Mill is a life changer

[CODEMAN]

I've had my mill for a few weeks now. After doing some basic stuff, I decided to add DRO units to it. Man alive….what a difference in operations. Accuracy down to .001 increments and dead on repeatability.

I am in production of morse code keys that require very accurate drilling of 11 holes of various sizes in a brass base plate. It used to take me forever to map out the drill holes after bluing the piece and then center punching. Inevitably holes were close but not perfect. Now? Perfect. I created a chart with X and Y coordinates and what used to take me quite a long time now takes just a matter of about 10 minutes.

I have no doubt that adding DRO to my mill will be the best $100 I'll ever spend in the shop

Steve

 

[xalky]

I have DROs on 2 lathes, my bridgeport, and my surface grinder. I don't even want to work on a machine without one. It takes 2-3 times longer to produce a part without one, and the chances of screwing up are that much greater without one. Unless your producing very simple parts with big tolerances, a DRO is a must have IMO.

I have 2 Chinese units off of Ebay on my lathes and I absolutely love them. For under $500, I already paid for one of them in time savings alone. The other one just got installed last week, it will have paid for itself in a couple of weeks. Well worth the investment.

Marcel

 

[ric686]

I totally agree that it makes operations faster and more accurate. I've got a mini-mill too and just added 3 iGaging scales and a Shumatech DRO550 display with my own mounting hardware. I'm having a little trouble with random resets on the X axis display, but I'm in the process of troubleshooting the problem. The DRO rig has made such a difference that I want to look into putting a couple scales on my mini-lathe once my hobby fund recovers.

 

[chuckorlando]

If all the keys are the same or close, could you make a fixture with drill bushings? DRO's are a joy