Article From: 4/14/2011 Production Machining, Lori Beckman, Managing Editor
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Accuracy and quickness are attributes that every shop strives to obtain. Once you think you’ve mastered this art, you discover ways to improve even further. It is a never ending road. Recently, I came across an article online from Production Machining that sums up five options that are cited to produce higher productivity in a shop. The first option jumped out as something I could pass on to my readers: “Add a digital readout (DRO) to any mill, lathe or grinder currently without one.” Sounds easy enough and well worth the investment and effort, considering the results boost both speed and accuracy. The article, “Five Options for Higher Productivity,” explains that DROs provide instant fingertip control over the most frequent shop operations. It cites several examples of common DRO functions that can quickly add to a shop’s productivity, including a ½ function to divide the current axis value in half, allowing quick and accurate location of the center of a workpiece.
