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Whacheon HL460 DRO Installation?

GregSY

Diamond
Joined
Jan 1, 2005
Location
Houston
I bought a new Newall DRO for my 'new' HL460 lathe. This has a 10" travel on the cross slide. It's the DP1200 system with the slim (about 5/16" diameter) carbon fiber rod type slide for the Y axis.

I installed the bed encoder with no problem. But, the cross slide is trickier...there is very little room. On my previous Colchester, the was enough real estate that I had no real issue mounting the affair.

So...my question is...is it OK to 'reverse install' the encoder assembly? In other words, can I mount the part that normally moves with the cross slide (the "transducer" I think) to the carriage and mount the scale (the carbon fiber rod) to the cross slide? I can't see why this wouldn't work but maybe it's 'forbidden' for some reason? hl460 dro.jpg
 
I have one lathe with the scale on the carriage and one lathe with the scale on the cross slide. It makes no difference to operation. You might have to change the counting direction in the parameters.


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I put a mitutoyo glass scale on a Whacheon 2 weeks ago. It is huge in comparison to the Newall. The scale is on the cross slide. I made a new cross slide lock with a thin hex and spaced the scale out to go over it. That placed the scale a bit too close to the carriage lock. I made a tall nut, round past the scale, hex above it.
 
Thanks guys. Yes, I was thinking of extending the lock screw as it's too short to reach out from under the slide cover.

I find it interesting that Newall specifies the slides be installed with no more than .002" tolerance with respect to the end-to-end travel of the carriage. IMO that's pretty much impossible with a 40" slide that's 5/8" diameter and mounted with the clamps they provide. I mean....you can probably hit that tolerance at various places, and some of the time, but not all the time in every place.
 
Actually...looking at it further, I see that there's no way to put the scale on the cross slide without the transducer interfering with the lock. So when you made a thin hex.....that means you'd have to access that hex with a socket by going under the cover? And the thin nut passes under the transducer when the slide travels?
 
OK....after further thrashing about, here is what it will look like. This is a scrap piece of aluminum, I'll get a good piece tomorrow and make the real one.

The aluminum screws to the slide using existing holes. There is also a hole for the extended tightening screw to pass through. The scale then attaches to the aluminum. The transducer is attached to the back side of the carriage using the Newall angle bracket.

I like this layout as the transducer cable will not movement in the Y direction, only X. It also places the transducer at the most danger-free corner of the carriage.

It will all fit under the aluminum angle cover, which will be attached to the aluminum with screws.


With this arrangement, access to the carriage clamp nut will be unimpeded. If the slide is all the way out, it gets close enough that you might have to use an open end wrench rather than a box end but I can live with that.hl460 dro y.jpg
 








 
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