[keen]

Always looking for ways to save time on the mundane CNC set up tasks - eg measuring the length of different tools.

I have not been able to find an inexpensive digital height gauge so I gave up looking and made a digital vernier adapter - see pic below.

Now my tools can be quickly measured with much less concentration.

The base has adustable 3 point leveling so that the measuring jaw can be set up parallel to the base.

[saabaero]

Great idea! I have the dial gauge that came with the TTS set however that doesn't seem to be that accurate so I usually use my 24" digital height gauge on my surface plate. Your idea eliminates need for the surface plate and can be kept nearer the CNC.

[Don Clement]

A digital height gage is no more accurate than a vernier. Accuracy is no better than +-0.001" over six inches. Also height gages suffer from Abbe error in that the measurement is not in line with the measurent axis. Digital may be more convienent and less prone to human errors in reading but not more accurate.

[pete from TN]

And to me the best ideas are the simplest solutions to a problem. I would actually be out in the shop right now building one if I had not found today a fellow local to me on craigslist that has a nice granite surface plate 24x18x 4 inches thick for a great price. I am gonna head over there this afternoon to pick up one from him. Apparently he has like four or five of them. I guess I am gonna hafta build a welded steel stand for it and some leveling feet. I am kinda excited as this is my first surface plate and I have always used the mill table or my table saw for that kinda measurements. Now I can really check my parts for square and more accurately and carefully measure my machined parts. I am probably gonna get the tormach system so I will be able to use the plate to set zero on my tooling as well so this should be fun!!

I suppose I would still need a setup like this altho I have an old starret height guage already. With your setup you can make repeatable measurements and zero from one tool to another easily. Nice work and great idea....peace...

[saabaero]

Well Keen you got me motivated so I spend part of my day in the shop modifying the dial height gage that came with my TTS set.

[keen]

Well Keen you got me motivated so I spend part of my day in the shop modifying the dial height gage that came with my TTS set.

Hey that looks cool! How did you attach the vernier to the base?

[saabaero]

Hey that looks cool! How did you attach the vernier to the base?

The original hardened base had a wedge block with two screws that drew it in from the rear. The column had a matching taper so the wedge block put forward and sideways pressure on the column and held it securely in place.

The base was hardened so I ground everything perfectly square before starting (the slot for the column was originally just milled). I then cut the anvils off my digital column (originally a 12" digital caliper), ground those sides true and then ground a taper on one side to match the angle of the wedge block. When I clamped the column into place and slid the anvil down to the base the parallelism was perfect and I couldn't see any light through it. Every measurement I took on the drill in the photo repeated exactly to the 1/2 thou. I could never get the original dial tool height gage to repeat so I threw it on the side and never used it!

Thanks again Keen for your inspiration!

[pete from TN]

The digital caliper looks pretty vertical from the pictures. I see you have a nice digital height gauge already there or I would have said that I would probably have turned the digital caliper around backwards from where you have it to be able to set zero off the surface plate instead of the base plate. I may have to make one of these since I just bought a nice surface plate with stand yesterday and I want to be able to do some vertical measuring and also to setup my tormach toolholders when I get there. The next thing I was gonna ask you guys is what kind of measuring gauge do you use to check for flatness and parallelism on your surface plates. I was playing with my setup last night and I just put my magnetic base and dial indicator on there with a DTI setup and run some 123 blocks underneath the tip to check for flatness. This is something I am sure there is a proper tool for as the magnetic base is not really heavy enough to keep it down especially when I used the 0-1" dial indicator. I thought about getting a ground flat plate of heavy steel and lock the mag base to it for this purpose. I have seen the small setups they sell with the steel shaft drilled into the small granite base and then some sort of indicator holder that can be adjusted vertically for this but I was just wondering what you guys use.... peace

[saabaero]

I see you have a nice digital height gauge already there or I would have said that I would probably have turned the digital caliper around backwards from where you have it to be able to set zero off the surface plate instead of the base plate.

Actually, I wanted the tool height gage to reference from itself so I wouldn't have to walk over to my surface plate each time to reference a different size drill bit into a chuck. I can now keep the tool height gage on the workbench by the CNC.

[pete from TN]

My setup will be as I described for the referencing the surface plate as my surface plate is on a heavy roller stand and can be brought up to the cnc easily. What are your thoughts on the vertical indicator setup as I asked about in my previous post? I would like to get some sort of holder for a DTI that will be setup as a way to check for paralellism on the surface plate somehow....peace