I have found the DRO to be precise and efficient. With the desired thickness dialled in, material can be planed with confidence, knowing that it will come out the desired thickness. This is a big improvement over my previous method which was: 1) measure board thickness after the first pass, 2) calculate the additional amount to remove, 3) knowing that 1 rotation of crank changes the thickness by 2mm, estimate the fraction of circle that the crank needs to be rotated, 4) hope for the correct thickness on the next pass.

Another big advantage is that I can plane some pieces of wood to desired thickness, then do other work with the planer, then return to the original thickness and plane more pieces that match the thickness of first pieces. This is really handy in a project.

I chose the Wixey WR510 Type 2, because it looked like a simple mechanical design with no wires coming out of the display, and it runs on AAA batteries rather than button cells, and price was reasonable.

A couple of things I found with the Wixey that may be overcome with a different DRO are: 1) display resolution is 0.005 inch, which is fine in reality but I would prefer to see 0.001 inch. 2) cannot change display from inches to mm without recalibrating, 3) display sometimes freezes and requires a power cycle to get working again, but calibration is not lost, so not a big problem.

The Wixey came with some brackets for mounting to common lunchbox planers but these were of no use on my 4-post planer, so I had to make my own mounting fixtures as shown in photos. Rare earth magnets, glued to the bottom of the display, stick to a custom made steel bracket the moves up and down with the carriage. A wooden block supports an aluminum angle bar that holds the scale for the display to ride up and down on.

Video showing the details of installation, calibration, and verification to confirm accuracy and repeatability: https://youtu.be/6ev_aK7fE60

1 Wixey DRO Planer.jpg

3 Bracket.jpeg

4 Magnets.jpeg