Well after a few weeks thinking and fitting in between work I finally have a three axis DRO on my Cowells Mill.
Below are the brackets fabricated to fit to left hand side of the table to mount the X and Y axis Read Heads.
The Y axis read head on its bracket. The magnetic strip it is reading is inside the aluminium extrusion fitted to the knee.
Rear view of table showing both X and Y axis magnetic strips
View from front of Y axis readhead
Y axis readhead and magnetic strip.
Comms Box. This is based on the Yuriy's Toys design and uses a Texas Instruments MSP Launchpad chip. I have used Perspex light pipes to bring the LED signals to the front of the case. The data is sent via Blutooth to a Android tablet (Toughshield T700)
And here's the display.
I'm very pleased with it. It has fitted very neatly considering the small size of the Cowells mill.
You can see the magnetic strip sticks out from the left hand side of the table about 70mm. This was so the read head could be mounted to the left hand side of the saddle. By doing this I only lost 7mm of rearwards travel of the saddle. As the vice overhands the back of the table by around 5mm I am actually only losing 2mm of movement.
Very happy.
Regards,
Colin