How Did You Install A Digital Readout on Your Stationary Bed/Moveable Head 15" Planer

[steve swantee]

Hello All,

At work I use a large planer with a factory digital readout, and I am considering adding one to my 15" planer at home. My planer is the General International 30-115M1 Stationary bed/moveable head 15" planer seen below. While I have seen a number of moveable bed planers with the Wixey/Accurate/Igaging digital readout installed. I haven't seen any installed on a stationary bed planer like mine. If anyone has done this, I would like to see some pics of how you were able to mount it.


Thanks in advance
Steve

[Bruce Wrenn]

Since your planer is a clone of the Delta DC-380, google "Mounting a Wixey on a Delta DC-380. Several threads here at SMC showing how it's done, along with others.

[steve swantee]

Thank you, that's very helpful Bruce.

[David Buchhauser]

Steve - you may find this video useful as well.
David

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy-j8VQdT6Q

463202
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy-j8VQdT6Q)

[Bill Dufour]

Does a wixley do any calculations or is it simply a readout? To be honest the only calculations I can see for a planer would be add and subtract. No need for a real DRO that can calculate in three dimensions for you.
Bill D.

[steve swantee]

Simply a readout for quick repeatability and accuracy...

[Bill Dufour]

For a planer I doubt that accuracy is important. I would not worry over much about setting the scale parallel to the motion. Set it by a try square is accurate enough. It is only on a longer scale on a more accurate machine that parallelism becomes important enough to worry about. Heck many wood workers set their tablesaw fence off square on purpose.
Bill D

on ebay today $40 for a dro readout and another $40 for a 6" scale.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/193845992717?hash=item2d221f1d0d:g:8xoAAOSwWztgysN A

[steve swantee]

You lost me Bill...don't think you can use a try square to set depth on a planer...

[Bill Dufour]

Just meaning that mounting the scale for the dro does not need to be exactly parallel. Even if it is off by one degree or more it will be repeatable just fine. No need to break out the dial test indicator, sine bars, $1,000 scrapped straight edges etc.
Bill D

[steve swantee]

Gotcha Bill. Thanks

[Bill Dufour]

on say a 60" metal lathe if the scale is off parallel by a fraction of a degree it can add up to more then 1/1000 of an inch in 60 inches. For metal work that matters. not important for wood. The wood will probably move more then that over night as moisture content changes.
A good dro can be calibrated so if it is off angle it will calculate the trig and tell you how much the tool has moved parallel to the work. Of course you would have to be able to measure that accurately over a long distance which few woodworkers have the equipment to do.
Bill D

[Tai Fu]

I installed DRO on my milling machine (it did not come with one).

Basically they have those optical DRO thing that I bought for roughly around 200 USD from China. One of those should work. But since you are talking about a wood planer, you REALLY do not need 5um accuracy (not even my milling machine can achieve that kind of accuracy, perhaps a surface grinder could if it was brand new and/or reconditioned properly). But the DRO helps a lot in positioning holes and stuff and it will do trig and all that to help you drill bolt hole patterns as well as holes in an arc. Very helpful for certain machining operations but honestly a CNC does everything better.

They sell those capacitive type DRO scales for low cost milling machines and they are available for various lengths. They are not that accurate, says it's accurate to about 0.001" but I would not even bet on it. It is about as accurate as you can expect a dial/digital caliper to be (they use the same technology). But for woodworking they are good enough for government work. However the downside is that you can't really mount them to an external display meaning you have to peer down to where you have it installed to read it. It may not be safe to do so especially if you got long hair or other loose dangly bits you are wearing (shop tip, SECURE THOSE BEFORE YOU WORK). But they are much cheaper than optical DRO systems.

As for where to mount it, anywhere where the upper bit and the lower bit moves is a good bet.You would mount the scale itself on the head and the long ruler thing to the base of the machine. You may need to machine brackets or blocks to make this work. You will also need to find a way to mount the top end of the scale to a stable platform, which a planer has none... so you will need to mount a sidebar for the scale to keep it from getting moved around due to usage or vibration (it will throw off your reading and give you false reading, not good). Perhaps the 4 pillars the head ride against is a good platform to mount a scale...

Or you can simply just buy a cheap 12" digital caliper and mount that to the head. But honestly you don't really need it, because you can just run it through, check it with a digital caliper.

[steve swantee]

Thanks for the replies, Guys...lots of good info. That's an interesting point about the digital caliper mounted to the head...I don't have a digital one, but I do have an analog caliper that reads in both fractions of an inch and 100ths of an inch, that could work.

[Jim Becker]

You can buy a decent digital caliper for not a lot of money. Totally worth it, IMHO.