Thread: Shumatech DRO-550 available

If greater resolution is required, the DRO-550 does support glass scales.
The glass scales typically give a resolution of 0.005mm and are available for about the same price as the caliper style.

Thanks for that Geoff, it clears things up. The glass scale will stand up better over time and have little problems.
Do you have a link to those cheap glass scales? I have been chasing a couple and can only find them for $150 + each delivered, which makes it better off buy a complete DRO set including accessories for $100 more.

Dave

I agree Dave, I personally feel the scales themselves are the weakest link in the Shumatech system, however especially when released it was a much cheaper introduction to DRO for people who may not otherwise be in a position to go down that route. I just thought I recall reading somewhere that the 550 now supported other traditional scales, but perhaps I'm mistaken.

I guess by the same token, the vernier scales type route does have a few advantages, besides cost, and that is the scales themselves can often be easier to mount. Particularly if you caught the article in the latest MEW IIRC, where a person removed the adhesive scale from the vernier, and remounted it partly under the cross-slide. I really liked that solution as the problem on smaller lathes, such as my 9" for example, is that the mounting itself can lead to a rather cumbersome and ugly setup. As you may have gathered, I consider the aesthetics to be almost as important as function, even on a piece of machinery such as this (incidentally, I used to travel up to Denmark 1-2 times per year just to look at design; form + function is something the Danes perfect ).

There's no doubt the Schumatech system offers a lot of features, and what may be considered "useless" to one person, may be highly desirable for another. As far as the accuracy, I've never used a super accurate DRO on a lathe personally, so perhaps I underestimate the usefulness of that accuracy. Clearly there are no disadvantage to accuracy per se, but personally if I'm turning work where accuracy of final size is critical, as I approach the final size I stop the lathe, measure the work, adjust, stop, etc until it's absolutely spot on. I'm not sure just how much I'd trust some numbers on a DRO to turn straight down to finished size, but I'm sure it would reduce the number of "cycles" of stopping to measure. If I was doing work commercially however I think an accurate DRO would be essential, as time is money.

Pete

Edit: Thanks Geoff, you posted as I was typing. Looks like my memory isn't as dodgy as I thought :P

Originally Posted by Dave J

Thanks for that Geoff, it clears things up. The glass scale will stand up better over time and have little problems.
Do you have a link to those cheap glass scales? I have been chasing a couple and can only find them for $150 + each delivered, which makes it better off buy a complete DRO set including accessories for $100 more.

Dave

Dave,
I may have been a bit premature is stating that glass scales are the same price as caliper style . I saw that CDCO had 40" glass scales for less than the equivalent caliper style but for shorter scales, the price difference is greater.

Last year on the Shumatech Yahoo group, there was a post about a Chinese supplier, Ditron, that had cheap glass scales. Some users ordered them but I haven't seen any reports on how well they worked out.
FYI, I've attached a PDF of their pricelist.

Pete
You don't have own a DRO yet?

If you have a tight machine you can pretty well rely on the numbers. If the machine is worn you will have to measure the job with something else so a larger resolution would do.
I always measure for with a mic for bearing fits, etc, but for anything else the DRO is fine. If I had to do multiple bearing fits in the same set up I do rely on the DRO after the first was measured.
In the end it is what suits you, if you need the tacho, SFM and the digital caliper scales to blend/hide into you machine, I am not going to argue.
For me a machine has to be accurate and functional, If it doesn't blend in and look factory I don't really care as long as it works.
Adding DRO's was the best thing I did to my machines. If ever you get an opportunity to use one I recommend it.

Geoff
Thanks for that, they look to be good prices. I wonder what the postage prices are? I might give them an email.

Dave

Hi All,

Just a vote for what Dave already said about accuracy, for 99% of the work I do I always turn down to final dimension just using the DRO, spot on every time. For bearing fits, which I don't do a lot of, you have to sneak up anyway, and dial in a tiny amounts on the DRO.

I should be a bit more emphatic here, one of the biggest advantages of having a DRO is that it takes the backlash out of the equation, that applies whether you are sneaking up on a bearing fit or not.

Back to the topic...
The Shumatech has the advantage of being fully documented, source code, circuit diagrams everything you need to keep it running in 20 years from now. I see that as a big plus, and probably outweighs any price disadvantage, I would happily pay more just for that capability. But I've already got Meister and Easson DRO's, if I didn't I would be looking seriously at the Shumatech. Wouldn't even consider it without glass scales though.

Regards
Ray

I bought the original Shumatech DRO-350 some years ago as it was:

a. Cheap, Buying a Sino/Easson/Meister DRO and scales would have cost more than my mill was worth.
b. It was a kit I could put together. I enjoy designing and building electronics stuff.
c. It ran with the cheap calipers or scales.

Most of these reasons no longer apply. Cheap glass scales are now available and the latest DRO-550 uses surface mount technology (SMD) so there's not much to actually build.
I updated the original DRO-350 with a DPU-550 addon board which gives nearly all of the features of the DRO-550 (no LCD support). The DRO-350/DPU-550 can have a problem with jitter caused by an electrically noisy environment but that's easily fixed.
As others have mentioned, the DRO has a lot of features that other DRO's don't have and the software is constantly being added to. The source code is freely available and can be changed to as required - several users have already done this. As new scale technology becomes available, support for them can be added.
At my level of expertise, the accuracy of the caliper style scales is more than enough. The only issue I can see with that type of scale is that there's not much protection against swarf getting into the read head. You can replace the read head for a few dollars but I think should they fail on my X2 mill, then I'd look at replacing them with glass scales.