DRO for milling machine or lathe

[AlbertNakaji]

Certainly, having DRO for milling machine and lathe would be ideal. Having to decide on which to add on first is what I'm contemplating now. Both milling machine and lathe a manual old iron. Any thoughts?

[pete]

I'd say mill first for sure. Milling to coordinates can be done with almost zero layout unless it's a real complex part and you do a layout just as a double check of your numbers. A dro doesn't fully remove the need for checks by measuring, so in my opinion it's a bit less important on a lathe than the mill. Others might disagree with my thinking though. If you do a lot of long shaft work then the dro on the lathe might be more important for that.

[Magicniner]

Buy a readout that can do Lathe and Mill and a set of scales for each machine, fork out for the extra display once you decide you need the DRO on both machines permanently

[SteveHGraham]

I would do the mill first. The lathe only has two coordinates, and they're pretty easy to keep track of with dials. I'm sure you can fancy a lathe up with a compound scale and God knows what else, but you won't really need it.

[larry_g]

I chose to do the mill first. To me it has a lot more chance to error with because of backlash or miscounting and working over larger areas. It's also handy to have all the functions of tool offset, origins, bolt holes and other functions I've not used. I find it easy to put a dial indicator on the lathe to track movements.

lg
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