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Bought a digital readout for my old Bridgeport, and now I wonder if I wasted $600
Last spring I put a $600 DRO on my 1985 Bridgeport and I still catch myself cranking the handles by feel out of habit. Half the guys at my shop in Dayton say a DRO turns a good operator lazy because you quit learning your dials. The other half say it cuts scrap and speeds up one-off parts so much that there is no debate. I ran 40 brackets last week and hit every number without counting turns once. For those who run manual mills, did a readout make you better or did it make you rusty on the dials?
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amyr572h ago
Did you ever notice how the old timers who swear by dials never mention how many parts they scrap when they lose count? I read a machinist thread a while back where a guy said his scrap rate dropped by half after he put a DRO on his mill, and he had been running manuals for 20 years. You can still learn your dials whenever you want, but hitting every number on 40 brackets without counting turns is the whole point of the thing.
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