I've got an HXX DRO fitted to my Bridgeport clone. Bought it myself in China and brought it back myself but a complete system is similar price to what you quote.

This is the one I've got. The manual was in extremely strong Chinglish but you can read one of the manuals from the other suppliers as they are very similar.

Murray

Got mine from MDRO, so good I then bought a set for the lathe as well. Once you've used them you'll never go back. MDRO were very helpful indeed.

**LINK**

£222 looks like a good price delivered, as long as it comes through customs without additions. Otherwise it may be much closer to £300.

It depends, then, on how you value local, cf international, after sales service, should you need it.

I recently got caught by banggood, sending out-of-spec rubbish. Just a good job it was not something that might have broken the bank.

Feedback looks good, but that only lasts for a short while and maybe does not reflect breakdowns at 11 months.

Your money, your choice. Looks very much like the standard box of tricks with a different brand name and, yes, it will likely do as much as you might ever need.

The set I gave the link to was under £200 delivered and sold directly by the company that makes the glass scales. It's the same display unit as the ebay one which is a sort of generic product.

Very happy with mine and you can even shorten the scales if you need to.

Murray

Murray , how easy are scale to shorten, i know magentic scales are easy but ive seen the odd cheap older readouts with scales , but obviously taken off full size industrial machines. Ive heard people say they are easy to shorten despite certain manufacturers saying they cant be shortened . I think the last cheap ones i saw was a newall spherosyn? Readout plus three scales ,( scale were far two big for a alexander mill) but all was less than £100.

and i believe they use some sort of steel balls in the scale and arent glass. Newall say they cant be shortened but after reading one or two forums some people were saying they tried it and they worked fine to all intents .

These "glass scales" are basically a length of flat glass with a laser-etched scale on it. So basically companies like HXX do a lot of laser scale making.

To shorten one of these glass scales, you remove one or both of the end caps, withdraw the little sliding bogey thing (with the electronics on it) and simply score and snap the glass to the correct length. You can also take the opportunity to clean the original operators finger prints from the scale(!). Then reassemble, having shortened the aluminium housing and wipers too, of course. A couple of photos here in my album. You have to drill and tap the 4 holes which isn't the end of the world.

One thing to be aware of is that most scales have an index mark as well as the basic A/B scale markings. That allows you to reacquire the absolute position after a power down where the table has been moved. So ideally you wouldn't chop off the part with the index. It would still work but you'd lose that ability to reacquire your position. Best way is to tell it to find the index mark (display blinks until it finds the mark or possibly beeps?), then mark where it is to check it isn't a problem.

Murray

Sorry, I have only ever messed about with these glass scales. I may be wrong but I believe many (most?) of the DRO scales have similar A/B/X TTL outputs, so it may be fairly straightforward to mix and match different scales. The resolution is presumably a configurable item in the DRO itself.

These aren't particularly compact scales so in some cases it may be better to use smaller equivalents.

Murray