Back in early March I started a new case (here's the link HTPC) but in Late March all hell broke loose in the automotive business and I was forced to focus all my attention on work. After nearly four months of bustin my butt things are starting to look up and I can finally get back to modding....although I still don't have the time I had before.

When I left off I was getting ready to make the top panel which was going to present a problem.....so this first update is more about what I did to solve my problem....then updates to the case will follow....hopefully

OK here's the problem....the top panel is going to be 15 1/2" X 16 1/2". In order to get enough air flow through the case it is going to need to have vents cut into it all the way across the portion that will sit over the hard drives. The "bed" of my mill is only 14" x 4" so there is no way to hold the panel in place to cut the vents.




As you can see from the pic above it's near impossible to bolt any thing of size to the bed......so I made the bed bigger.





The new bed is 12" x 24" and 3/8" thick plate steel....it is not perfectly flat but it's within a few thousands and that's more than good enough for what I will use it for.

It does however present a new problem....I can't see any of the scales (they were never that accurate but they at least provided a point of reference).

The solution is to convert to DRO (Digital Read Out) scales.

There are several DRO's available for a mini mill starting at around $800.

The one below is the cheapest I could find and it's still around $500 after freight. You also have to make all the hardware yourself to mount it to the mill....it's a universal DRO not designed for any particular mill.







Well that was still too much $$$. I decided to put my own kit together.

After a little digging online I found some Digital Calipers at Harbor Freight that looked like they might work. As far as I could tell from the pics the digital readout on the calipers looked the same as the kit in the pic above and the price was right. $60 for the 12" caliper and $40 for the 8" caliper.






Taking this a step further you can see that after all the extra stuff is removed they start to look a lot more like the ones in the kit.





When I went to the local Harbor Freight store I discovered that there truly is a god.....not only did they have them in stock they were also on sale! $40 for the 12" caliper and $30 for the 8" caliper.





Here's all the stuff I hacked off.





Another nice thing about these calipers is that even though there is no earthly reason (at least that I can think of) for a remote digital readout "port" they still have one.
You just gotta love the Chinese....they are..if anything, efficient.....why make several different readout scales when you can make one and use it for everything?

Here's the Port




It's important because I want to use a remote XYZ display which I found on Ebay for $189.




Oops....gotta run!

I'll finish up with pics of everything installed a little later today or tonight.

Glad to have you back, and see that mod continue!

glad to see you up n modding again... just when I thought you'd plateaued with the level of crazy, you go and mod your shop machines

hey I have the same caliper, but the 150mm version I've found it to be accurate to smaller than 0.1mm (by sending stuff to be CNC milled based on my measurements for 0.1mm tolerances), so it's good enough for me

Welcome back man. I love reading these work logs of yours. So I hope to see good things

When I opened this thread my brain just screamed FUELER all over Sweet, can't wait for the mod to continue

Thanks to everybody........it's nice to be back and doing something I really enjoy for a change. Not that I dislike my job....I don't....but it can be stressful at times.

Let's get back to the pics



I mounted the 8" caliper on the Y-Axis (Front to Back). The mounting bracket was cut from a 3" bar of 6061 aircraft aluminum. Above the 8" caliper you can see the mounting bracket for the X-Axis (Side to side) also cut from 6061 aluminum. I had to completely disassemble the digital guage so that I could drill and tap the back to mount the bracket that fastens it to the Y-Axis on the bed......This was repeated for the X and Y axis guages.

Here's the Z-Axis (Up/Down) assembly




This bracket was also made from 6061 aluminum....It has a dual purpose...It is also the stop for the "Mill Head".





I did the same thing with the X-Axis mount....it also doubles as a stop for the X-Axis on the bed and I was able to extend the movement on the axis by a 1/2" (I marked it with a yellow line in the pic below)




Here's the X-Axis caliper mounted. If you look real close you will notice that I did not use the standard cable plug for the external port....I instead soldered the wires to the port and I have since done this to all three readouts....the plugs are just too flimsy and were prone to falling out.





And finally here's the whole thing.....ready to go to work.





HTPC updates coming this weekend.....I hope.

Nice job on the digital XYZ

Now all you have to do is switch to metric

He he.....look at the display.....all I have to do is push a button and it's metric.

you know it makes sense!

I still can't measure in inches like "hmm, so this is 6 and 9/1024 inches"... I'm not a human calculator

haha, or would that be slide rule

anyway, so you use the XYZ to mill without needing to mark out the cuts? is it for reference points (endpoints, centres, etc), or do you use it while milling as well?

Well prior to the DRO I always scribed all the cuts I wanted to make in a red dye and just eyeballed it from there. Now I can scribe everything just like before but now I can zero everything from where I start my first cut and just come back to zero each time (basically zero error) instead of trying to eyeball it.

This is a little off subject but.....how did your headphone amp turn out Hardnrg? I've really been out of touch the last few months so I'm sure I missed any updates you may have had but it sure looked like a nice build....I'm very interested in how it turned out.

Edit: Just for the record....here in the States we don't just use "Fractions". At a more technical level most if not all mechanics, engineers or anybody else that is relying on a high degree of accuracy would use the 10nths scale. 1 tenth, 1 hundredth, 1 thousandth, 1 tenthousandth etc. Holycrap! we can be precise just like the Euro's!!!

Man nice work

I haven't had time to take progress pics... but I'll post up some final pics after some higher priority stuff gets finished...

Even more off subject, I got some polycarbonate sheet for my side panel

I probably would have finished the panels and front plastic parts if I could find the screws/spring/lock for the handle/catch... it's all laid out in my kitchen/lounge (aka workshop)

As much as I'd like to tell you to quit screwing around and get it done I can't because I am just as guilty. Edit: Thanks bosco