Readout settings tenths vs thousandths

[Razzle]

This is more of a survey than a question. I have 5 micron glass scales on my Seig X2D minimill. Since calibration I have left the readouts set to display down to tenths. Sometimes I get confused and read the tenths as thousandths. My question for everyone is what do you keep your readouts set to display? I highly doubt that tenths has any meaning on my X2D. So is there any value on keeping the display set to show tenths?

 

[markba633csi]

For day to day use I'd keep it on thousandths

 

[ddillman]

The only thing I use the tenths for is to show when it is going to change to the next thousandths

 

[projectnut]

The DRO on my vertical mill reads down to .0002". I usually get it as close to the desired dimension as possible. The table usually moves a tenth or so when locking it down. Even with the movement I know I'll always be well within a thousandth of the desired location.

 

[RJSakowski]

I have no problem with displays showing more digits than I need for the particular operation at hand. I mentally round off as needed. The Tormach display reads to tenths and the DRO on my RF clone reads to .0002". The DRO on my lathe reads to .0004" on the Z and tailstock and .0008" on the X as it reads diameter.

 

[ChazzC]

iGaging SS Plus scales & TouchDRO’s on Mini-Mill & Mini-Lathe: 0.001”/0.01mm.

 

[PNW_Guy]

I usually use thousandths, but I wouldn't mind if there was a button on the main screen (rather than a few pages deep in the settings) to switch.

 

[WobblyHand]

It's all a matter of preference. Use what works for you. Since I have 1um scales, if working in metric, I display out to 1um. If working in imperial, I display tenths. Haven't found the number of digits confusing in practice. (6 digits is ok to work with, at least for me.) Since I'm using my own DRO encoder display software, I can display what's required, or truncate the digits, or display radius vs diameter. Currently using radius.

Using a 1um encoder on X allows roughly 0.0001" resolution on diameter, which is more than good enough for me. (1um on radius is 2um on diameter. 2um = 0.0000787") It's pretty rare for me to need to hit a diameter that tight. Even rarer to actually achieve it. I figure it is better to aim small and miss small, than the other way around. I'm not going for this level of precision often, as it's usually not warranted, but it's good to know that I have a way to measure this if needed.

 

[Flyinfool]

While my work is to the thousandth my display reads to .0002 this lets me tell which thou I am closer to. rarely but some of my work does require accuracy to +/-0.001.

If my display could show 6 decimal places I would have that turned on.

If the display only showed 3 decimal places I would not be able to hold the tolerance. The last digit of a display is only accurate to 1 or 2 counts.
The last digit is always rounded and you do not know the method used. Some displays round up or down at 5, but does the 5 round up or down? Some always round up, so .4321 would show as .433 even though it is really close to .432. Others always round down so .6789 would show as .678.

 

[WobblyHand]

The last digit is always rounded and you do not know the method used.

One of the advantages of writing your own - you can choose the method.

I agree with you on only showing 3 decimal places. I had that on my original DRO and display. The rounding/truncation that was used by the DRO was really annoying and it was quite hard to hit a dimension. To make it more difficult, the mag tape was native 0.001" resolution, (0.002" on diameter), the metric display was jumpy and did not progress linearly. Needed a bunch of trig to set up the compound to get better results. Now I just dial it in and get what I want (obviously to a tolerance) without the math diversion.

In my case, I got the DRO reader for "free" when I made my own ELS. I just added code to display the two linear encoders. The linear encoder rates are slow compared to the spindle encoder, so there was practically no additional overhead.