DRO Shaper

The Idea



Although I love my shaper, I found getting a consistent depth a bit of a challenge.

I had salvaged a few DRO scales a few years back and rediscovered them recently. I remembered the glass scale in smaller one was broken, so I was about to pitch it when a thread popped up on a machinist's forum about shortening scales by cutting (breaking) the glass. Mine was already broken, so the delicate part was done!


I rounded up a matching head off the bay and decided to give this a whirl. I had less tied up in the whole works than a decent set of calipers, so I had little to lose. I needed a working head to check out the other scales, anyway.



First job was to shorten the housing to match the broken scale. I knew there wouldn't be much left, but again, there was nothing to lose.

One end of the housing was cut off with a bandsaw, then the step for the cap was cut and new holes drilled and countersunk. Nothing difficult.

The pic below shows the scraps left over from the cut and the broken bits of the scale.


With the scale cut down, it was time to see if my efforts were worth the trouble. Not only was the scale broken, the head housing had taken a hard shot from a scrapyard claw, so I wasn't even sure the unit would work at all. I hooked the scale up to the head, flipped it on, hit zero reset, and held my breath. No error, so the head was working so far. A quick slide showed my little mini scale was fully operational.

Nothing left but the simple task of adapting it to the head of the shaper.... yeah, right.

Among other problems were clearing the column and limited travel (the scale ended up with only 1.35" of travel). Also getting the entire reader head and scale assembly to fit on the head, while letting the clapperbox clear the scale and making sure the handle didn't get into the works and finding a spot with metal to mount against. I was just stubborned enough to make it work, I guess.

So here you go... a DRO shaper.


The gold colored scale is just visible on the left side of the head, behind the tail of the toolholder.


Here the damage to the readed head and scale housing is evident. The open holes are sealed on most installations, but in this case, shouldn't pose a problem as the scale is far removed from the flying chips and there is no coolant needed.

The extended rail above the reader head will eventually be slotted to allow the DRO head to be positioned over the entire travel of the compound slide. DRO travel will still be limited to 1.3", but it will allow that range to be used in different locations or allow the inoperative DRO to slide for long cuts.


One challenge was situating the scale unit so that it would clear the column. As can be seen here, there is only about 1/8" clearance on the side and at the bottom, with the head fully down.

This was just a fun experiment to learn more about DRO instalation before going after some of my other machines, but I hope it will make my shaper a more useful tool in the shop.
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