Which 3-axis DRO to get??

[Stepper Monkey]

Hi Bertmiller,

There is an encoder board made specifically for Mach, made by a company called Sound Logic. This allows standard quadrature encoders to be used with Mach, and its not expensive - about US$125 I think.

I noticed that Shumatech did also have Chinese-to-standard quadrature signal cables, I don't know anything about them, thier use, or cost however.
That combination at least looks like maybe a plug and play solution to using the Chinese encoders, but personally I'd just try to score some standard used linear encoders off Ebay and forgewt adapting the signals.

[bertmiller]

im only interested in absolute values. i work alot with quadrature encoders they miss a step now and then.
converting chinese values to rs232 isnt so difficult so im going to investigate in that and see if i can make it work with mach3 and its rs232 modbus protocol.

[acondit]

StepperMonkey,

Actually the Shumatech adapter is quadrature to Chinese signal converter, so that quadrature encoders can be used with the DRO-350 box which expects the Chinese signal. The DRO-350 also supports things like incremental or absolute, hole pattern calculation, tool offset, touch-off option or tachometer option, and choice of mill or lathe configurations.

Alan

Originally Posted by Stepper Monkey Hi Bertmiller, There is an encoder board made specifically for Mach, made by a company called Sound Logic. This allows standard quadrature encoders to be used with Mach, and its not expensive - about US$125 I think. I noticed that Shumatech did also have Chinese-to-standard quadrature signal cables, I don't know anything about them, thier use, or cost however. That combination at least looks like maybe a plug and play solution to using the Chinese encoders, but personally I'd just try to score some standard used linear encoders off Ebay and forgewt adapting the signals.

[mchabot]

Originally Posted by bertmiller im only interested in absolute values. i work alot with quadrature encoders they miss a step now and then. converting chinese values to rs232 isnt so difficult so im going to investigate in that and see if i can make it work with mach3 and its rs232 modbus protocol.

Hello,

There is already a chinese scale to RS232 converter, it's Yadro. It allows four scales to be connected to a computer running display.
It is really simple and cheap to build.
Then you have to adapt yadro output to what Mach3 is waiting for.