A $24.00 digital caliper turns into a tailstock DRO

[dockrat]

I picked up a cheap digital caliper a while back when they were on sale to mount on my lathe tailstock and finally got around to making a mount for it yesterday. For the mount on the main body of the tailstock I milled out a piece of 1”x2” Al. on a 30° slope so that I wouldn’t have to crouch to read it then bolted it onto the ram body.



I then cut all the unnecessary bits and pieces off the caliper and cut it to length with a dremel with a cut off blade in it then bolted it to the mount.



Next I roughed out a piece of 3/8 Al plate on the rotab for the ram mount and cut the end off at 30° to match up with the main body mount.



Next I machined out a cap to hold the slider to the ram mount .

[dockrat]

The finished mount

[Black_Moons]

Awsome! Thanks for the step by step.. im really tempted to make my own now

[KillerMike]

Nice work.. very... inspiring.

Now.. wheres my spare caliper again?

Cheers
Mike

[Greebe]

Nice. Did you just grind off the jaws?

Greebe

[Braindead]

A very timely post, as HF has the DC's on sale right now:

4" $15.99
6" $11.99 <== best value
8" $29.99
12" $49.99

[gfphoto]

Nice! Thanks for the detailed pics and explanation. I especially like the 30° angle.

Why haven't I done this?

Gary

[sbmathias]

Is there enough travel left on the caliper to let you extend the tailstock spindle all the way? If not, could you have mounted the body nearer the left end? That way, the "carriage" of the calipers would be nearer zero when the spindle was at zero.

[m_kilde]

Hi Dockrat

Well isn't this just beautifully

Thank you for showing

[daveo]

Very nice! Thanks for the step by step