Video: How-to Measure a Milling Machine for a DRO Unit

Welcome to MSC Industrial, this is Larry the Machinery Guy. Today, the purpose of this video is how to measure a DRO for a milling machine.

We're going to cover all 3-axis or 4-axis of the mill, and what I've done is I position my x-axis all the way over to the far extreme, I put a witness mark here at that far extreme—we don't want to expose the ways. The purpose of that or the reason for not exposing those ways is sometimes chips get stuck in there because it is oil-based and that will damage those ways.

So I have a mark here, that's my far travel, now I'm going to move it all the way over and we're going to measure the difference of the two. Also, remember that the stroke, or the table size, has nothing to do with the stroke of the DRO. Never just go by the table size as far as trying to obtain a DRO, always use the measurement like we're going through now.

So I have my one-minute witness mark here, one on the other side, and we're going to measure the distance of the two. And that comes out to approximately 30 inches. So now we need a 30 inch scale on the x-axis.

Next, what we're going to do is go to the y-axis. I've done the same thing, I have my table pulled all the way out forward, made my witness marks here full stroke, and then I'm going to crank that in to its farthest travel on the inside. Now, a power for you on the y-axis is not going to affect your travels whatsoever.

All right, so that's fully in the back, I have my witness mark here, and we know that stroke’s approximately 12 inches. So, x-axis 30 y-axis 12, next what we're going to do is the Z or the up and down.

So, same thing, I have I placed witness marks over here on the side so I know where my furthest bottom travel is, now I'm going to raise that table up to see what the max up travel is.

Now, I hit a dead stop in the top. Okay, same thing, we have our two witness marks; we're going to measure the distance that that just traveled. In here, we have 16 inches.

Last one we're going to cover is the quill, right up here that’s our quill travel and that's real simple. Top to bottom is 5 inches and that's what would use.

So another thing to be careful of when you're looking for DRO, understand the measuring length and the overall the length of scales are going to differ. Please refer to the MSC website to get those exact differences between manufacturers. We really appreciate your time today; hopefully this was helpful, thank you again for watching. Have a great day.