Hi,
Personally, I'm not a fan of commercially made clamp sets like that. I've always felt I can make better clamps than I can buy. And here is a place you could save some money by making your own from pieces of scrap steel. I will see if I can my act together and whip up a few drawings this morning. They are dead easy to make and a great first project. A side note: In the US at least, clamp sets are sized by the studs that screw into them - i.e. 1/2", 3/8", 5/16" etc. Pretty silly isn't it.
DRO's are very nice to use. But fall into the buy later category. You have enough stuff to buy right now. A lesson on DRO's. The little DRO's on eBay are probably the inexpensive magnetic type. Made a lot like a digital caliper. In fact that's pretty much what they are. One really needs to look closely at the specs of the units. And this can be quite difficult to dig up sometimes.
There is generally one spec that is often shown, and that is the resolution of the scale. Say .025mm/.001". They might even give the same numbers as accuracy in per mm/inches. And .025mm/.001" per 154mm/6" is ok for manual machines. But the one spec that is almost like pulling teeth to find is repeat-ability. I want/need that scale to go back to exactly where it was. Not somewhere in the general area. Most of these scales are pretty poor at it. And every time you move, the error is random. After 3 or 4 moves you could be off by as much as .127mm/.005". It might not matter, or it might be junk by then. This is why glass scale DRO's are so bloody expensive. They repeat very well. The best of the hobby machinist scales I've found so far seems to be AccuRemote. They were at least honest enough to admit that their repeat-ability is .025mm/.001" per move. Glass scales would be .0025/.0001" or even better per move.
As far as CNC goes, that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish. And is a complex subject.
Keep up the questions. There is always something to learn. I've been making chips for a living for nearly 30 years. And I still learn new things everyday about it.
Dalee
On Sat, Nov 7, 2015 at 9:41 PM, troppolad@yahoo.com.au [GrizHFMinimill] <GrizHFMinimill@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
G`day guys
Sick of me yet lol. The friend of a friend that offered me the clamping set told me to check out ebay for DRO`s so i did. I found these in 6 inch, 12 inch, 24 inch up to 36 inch. What do you guys think of these for our little mills? I havent got the cash to buy the full cnc kit (as much or more as the damned mill) and cant se the value of it at this stage, but like the idea of being able to perfectly duplicate a certain piece of work to a known set of figures.
Cheers
Troppo
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Posted by: Dale E <dalee1002000@gmail.com>
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