What DRO’s have you used on your smithy?

I have an Anilam that I found used on Ebay. But I think if I was in the market for one I would look here
https://dropros.com/


I tried some that looked like the picture below but they quickly got fouled with chips and or cutting oil and were unreliable as heck.
You want good scales that can handle the harsh environment. A DRO that isn't accurate and reliable is worse than no DRO at all. I do use one that looks like below on the quill, the z axis, but it's above the action and I even put a little more felt around the scale
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I had three I-Gaging scales (similar to what Dataporter shows) on my Smithy Granite for several years. I was happy with them, but they ate up batteries and simply provided travel distance - no smart functions. If that would work for you, Taylor Toolworks has very good prices on I-Gaging tools and provides excellent customer service. (Plus you can use a wall wart instead of batteries.)

I recently upgraded to a more sophisticated, but cheap mainland Chinese 3-axis set up for the Smithy and it has worked out very well. The supplier I used has good customer service, including a tech rep ("Wilson"), plus their response times are quite fast. Time from order to delivery was less than 2 weeks.

I have had such good luck with the upgrade unit, that I bought a second one for my knee mill. (I also still have 2 I-Gaging scales on my Atlas lathe, and they continue to work fine.)

HTH, Bill
 
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bill70j said:
I had three I-Gaging scales (similar to what Dataporter shows) on my Smithy Granite for several years. I was happy with them, but they ate up batteries and simply provided travel distance - no smart functions. If that would work for you, Taylor Toolworks has very good prices on i-gaging tools and provides excellent customer service. (Plus you can use a wall wart instead of batteries.)

I recently upgraded to a more sophisticated, but cheap mainland Chinese 3-axis set up and it has worked out very well. The supplier I used has good customer service, including a tech rep ("Wilson"), plus their response times are quite fast. Time from order to delivery was less than 2 weeks.

I have had such good luck with the upgrade unit, that I bought a second one for my knee mill.

HTH, Bill
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I dont know how deep I will go to even begin to learn any smart functions. Already know the dials are not all that accurate and was thinking these would help in the inaccuracies of the dials/lead screws a bit. All though some of these smarter DRO’s are not much more than these read only types. Im still trying to stock up on a bit more tooling. I still need a better milling vise than what it came with. Been trying to score one locally used.
 
I bought glass scales on e-bay. The sellers were dodgey at best, but I finally have scales that seem to work OK. I went with a TouchDRO and tablet for display. I'm still learning how to use the DRO. I have a Smithy Midas 17-20. Just did the lathe scales.
 
kbsmith said:
I bought glass scales on e-bay. The sellers were dodgey at best, but I finally have scales that seem to work OK. I went with a TouchDRO and tablet for display. I'm still learning how to use the DRO. I have a Smithy Midas 17-20. Just did the lathe scales.
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I have an older Smithy 1220. I took the dimensions from one of the glass scale. Sellers are then did a mock up with cardboard to see how much space it takes up. It’s a little bulky than I anticipated and I’m going to lose movement on one side or the other on the cross feed.

I don’t know how much bigger the 17 x 30 really is. I have other hurdles to cross on my machine before I bother installing DRO. Unfortunately Smith he does not have the parts I need for my machine so I either got to figure out how to make them or sell off my Smithie and buy something newer with better support.
 
I had to find a 'low profile' scale for the cross-slide. The standard ones would have interfered with mounting the tool post. At that I had to give up the mounting for the follow-rest, which I have never used. I put the cross-slide scale on the headstock side as there are lock screws on the other. Thus, I lost a little travel under the chuck. Of course all the mounting brackets had to be specially made.
 
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