I’m a member but don’t come in much because I have most of the tools I need at home. About 9 years ago I got this 1960’s vintage Rockwell Mill from an auction at DFW airport. Disassembled, painted, replaced bearings and anything else that needed fixing. It has been a great machine. I don’t use it a lot but when you need a mill, you gotta have a mill. I’ve been thinking about putting a digital readout on it. I also have a 1940’s metal lathe that I would like a readout on. I see really really cheap stuff, and multi $K readouts. Just wondering if anyone else has good experience and can recommend a brand to go with.
Thanks
Randy
1 Like
I’ve attached some DROs from Grizzly. They seem to work well and, frankly, the mill is an old Bridgeport with some back lash. We can usually have plus or minus .002" errors and I would imagine a better mill would do a better job but within our parameters. (When I watch the backlash I can get them to do .001" accuracy or better.) Still, they are optical and once I attached them and made the special brackets, I can’t complain. I’ve done this on two mills, a gun lathe and the backstop of a hydraulic brake, The brake had a failure of the optical slide and I had to replace it but I think it was because the slide was misaligned and may have scratched the read glass. I take the blame for that one. I’d rate them as, “Pretty Darned Decent” just require patience to find a place, make the brackets and to drill, tap and attach them. http://www.grizzly.com/products/10-x-24-x-16-3-4-3-Axis-Digital-Readout-for-Mills/H7849
Love the vise handle!
The recommendation below is probably good advice. Have done tests to determine what backlash and runout is on the ways and spindle? If they are really good, less than .001" then higher prices digital may be justified. But if .002"-.003 then these moderately priced ages are probably fine since work less than those numbers can consistently be done. They usually are at ±.001" or ±.0005"
Nice setup you have there … when will you teach some Bridgeport or Sherline Mill classes to pay for your new readouts? 
My backlash (slop in the leadscrew) is about .01" in X and Y axis. But I always feed from same direction to take the slop out so it’s not a big deal to me. I was making some extenders for the arm on a bike rack yesterday, needed to drill three holes on 1.25" centers, I missed counting crank handle revolutions by half a turn (.10") and when I eyeballed the hole to hole dimension with my calipers I missed that I was about to drill in the wrong location, and drilled it. The holes didn’t line up with the bike rack so I rotated the piece 90 degrees and drilled three new holes. That error got me thinking I really want a readout.
These are 2 of 16 of these things I’ve made recently. A pretty simple part with no high precision. I have made other things that required a pattern of clearance holes in one part and drilled and tapped holes in another and it was sort of a Woo-hoo moment when I finally understood how to zero the handwheel scales, finding the edge of a part and traversing to a location relative to the edge, tool changes, and accounting for backlash. I could teach how I do it, but I’m not enough of an expert to teach how it should be done.
I haven’t checked runout of the mill spindle for a long time. When I replaced the bearings I went to a bearing shop and got the same size, but they weren’t precision bearings, and I get a little chatter sometimes that I think is from slop in the spindle bearings, so I’ve been planning on thinking about getting around to replacing them for at least 5 years.
I’ll probably start with a pair of scales like this style.
1 Like
In the past I thought of putting DRO on a mill, lathe, & a little table top CNC I built… With all the imports … Prices have gotten pretty cheap… This Amazon ad also has Longer Encoders in ad…
That looks like a pretty good option and I would get XYZ scales, I was looking on ebay mostly for name brand stuff (mititoyo, acu-rite) but it was more than I really could justify spending.
1 Like
That Amazon setup looks exactly like the Grizzly. Probably repackaged copy. Could be a good buy if you can switch to imperial instead of metric.
1 Like
It looks like it can display inch dimensions.
Too bad the scales only come in mm lengths, My table is 24" with 16" of travel, I’m not sure how I would ever fit a metric scale on my mill 