Info Wanted about fitting D/Readout to Myford

[Marauder]

Hi all i have been in the search section but have not found the info i want,,
I have a Myford S 7 and i want to fit a digital readout to it ,I don't know whether to go down the route of fitting them small plastic type readouts that move along a metal shaft and only cost a few pounds,Or i have seen on EBay that for about £75 a readout that comes in a posh alloy box ? has any one fitted one of these ? is it any good.........So what have you fitted to your Myford S 7 and does it work OK.

[Jasonb]

Try this for starters

http://www.model-engineer.co.uk/news/article.asp?a=4982

[raynerd]

Marauder - where have you seen "plastic type readouts that move along a metal shaft and only cost a few pounds" ?
 
Do you mean these: http://www.arceurotrade.co.uk/Catalogue/Measurement/Digital-Readouts

In which case the 12" is about £44 and not far off your £75 metal ones. I guess your ebay ones are the same thing inside an ally box but I could be very wrong.

I know you said you have searched but if you search this site for DRO you will find hundreds of posts about the subject.

[Marauder]

Cranerd,I did a search but could not find info about fitting a digital readout to a Myford s 7..Yea you were correct about the price expensive,, I thought that those plastic digital readouts were a reasonable price until i looked again lol.

[raynerd]

They are reasonably prices compared to the glass scales!

These might help:

http://www.model-engineer.co.uk/news/article.asp?a=4982

http://www.coventrymes.co.uk/membersprojects/dro/

[mgj]

I think some of those videos and articles may now be rather outdated. Allendale had at the Taunton show some new scales - magnetic strips rather than glass, which fitted into very neat cases. The outputs were compatible with a standard box. They are not that cheap, but then no DRO system is and Allendale are not OTT expensive -  but they are really practical for the small lathe. I always felt their earlier solutions a bit hopeful. This system is not, and I will fit it to my S7 when I get round to it.

[kwackers]

I have a 254 which is a bit bigger than a 7, what I found (and I assume it would apply) is fitting a glass scale to the rear for the saddle is no biggie. The size doesn't matter and you can bolt it to the taper mounts.

For the cross slide though every method of fitting results in fouling something. In the end I used the magnetic tape system which due to it's slim mount meant it only restricted the tailstock by a couple of mm. In theory you could even just glue the tape directly to the cross slide perhaps with a thin section of aluminium over it to protect it.
The only thing with the magnetic tape is it requires a felt wiper to prevent particles trying to squeeze between the tape and the read head. On the plus side there's no mechanical connection so you can remove the cross slide for cleaning without messing around unbolting heads etc (always dodgy with glass scales...)