$200 Shenzhen DRO Install and Review Part 3

In the final segment of the $200 Shenzhen DRO Install and Review I talk a bit about my experience with the $200 Shenzhen DRO. I go through the good and bad and some reasoning on why it is good for the home machine shop.

I've owned it for about 6 months at this point and I have used it on a number of projects and as a whole I'm very happy with how this project has worked out. The DRO has vastly improved the usability of my Rong Fu mill drill while also increasing my personal efficiency at getting projects done.

For the price it is a very good unit.

[PhilVandelay]

"The plastic has that smell" - I know exactly what you mean! Thanks for the review, I just ordered the same one, excited to see how that turns out

[KW-eipi]

You've been MIA from the YouTube scene for quite awhile. I really enjoyed your videos.
I you are still around and can reply to this comment, if you have any information on how to use the various functions of this DRO display, please share them here. Thanks

[Ryan-uzcr]

Just ordered one of these after much frustration with my grizzly mill lathe combo trying to drill a bolt circle and finding my dials loose .005 - .008 every revolution over 27 turns of the handle I was so far off I could not complete the project I was working on. Thanks for the review

[funone]

10 years ago a similar Accurite or Newall DRO could cost up to $2500! I'm SO glad I didn't spend all that money and now I can put DRO's on 10-12 of my machines for the same price.

[MrPragmaticLee]

Disregard my last question. In this software, it's called setting a "coordinate" and a + or - value can be entered. Again, thanks for the series.

[gene]

thanks for the video funny thing when you said yeah that smell and pause for 3 seconds a cricket started chirping but it was just in the shop lol

[sharkrivermachine]

Very interesting, I have a set on Igaging scales to install on my round column mill. I also have the Blu DRO to install. That being said I have more than $200 invested in hardware. It will be interesting to see how well if performs. I should be doing a video series on it this Spring.

[JustSpark]

I have this same setup on a mint Bridgeport, and I completely agree. The manual is in Engrish. That being said, if you have enough experience with these types of instructions, its actually very close to being understandable. They have mispelt some words close to their actually intended word. So its not too aweful bad.

[chrisaa]

Really good video - keep going - give us a shop tour - favorite tools etc.

[MrPragmaticLee]

Great video series. It'll be most helpful when setting up my lathe installation. On other DROs, I've seen & used a function to "set a dimension" for an axis. Basically you make a cut, take a measurement, & then set a dimension on the axis equal to the difference between your measurement & your desired value. As you advance your axis this value would decrement to zero. Have you found anything like this with this DRO's software? Thanks

[darrendean]

great video, I have found the after support from my supplier to be excellent ... I broke a part and they shipped me a new one same day, took about 5 days for me to get it in the UK. Price, well it might as well have been for free it was so little keep up the good work.

[warrenjones]

A DRO is a worthwhile addition to any mill IMHO. Some folks would be hard pressed to afford or justify the cash outlay for a DRO Pros set up never mind a Newall or other industrial unit. It seems like just the ticket for the casual home shop user or the poor fella on hot dog & beans budget.  And for the light industrial user or a shop that has a little used machine over in the corner that a DRO would make more useful, $200 with scales would be pretty tempting. One job would pay for it!

Cheers 

P.S Loved Episode 15.

[douglasthompson]

Hello, I enjoyed the video as I have the same mill and a similar DRO still in the box awaiting the finish of my shop expansion (hopefully this fall). Can you use the DRO to establish the head position on the column mill? For when you need to raise and lower it. That alone would make it a must have. I haven't even got the one installed and am thinking of another for the lathe!! Thanks again for the video. Take care. Doug

[chriswesley]

Great video - thanks. I'm poised to buy but some sellers offer a GCS900-2D and others offer the GCS900-2E. I see you have the 2E. Do you happen to know what the difference is - other than the colour of the buttons?

[editbench]

Hey I'm about to follow your lead on this for my new rockwell mill the link seems to have gone from the blog. Can you offer any way to locate this DRO ? I like what you did!!

[brucewilliams]

Hi, I appreciate the video. I went to your blog to look for the manual for the DRO; did you post it there?

[nathanweese]

Very helpful, Im getting ready to do the same with my small chinese knee mill. The home guy dosent need a $1000 dro to have fun and make chips.

[steveminard]

I purchased the 3 axis version. I have a software issue that you might have run across. The calculator is metric. When calculations are passed to the axes they are converted if the display is inch and passed directly when the display units are mm. I would prefer having the calculator not do this and just pass numbers directly. Have you seen this? Do you know a way to change this behavior? Thanks for the vids. I have the Harbor Freight version of your mill and plan to use your mounting strategy.

[nordishkiel]

Very nice, thank you for sharing. Does the readout return to the same value when the table comes to a hard stop twice?

[mikemoore]

Thanks for the info. I have one on order. Does yours have a feature for finding the center between two points?