I thought I’d wait between posts to actually get stuff worth writing about, and perhaps I waited too long. I’ve been keeping myself “entertained,” “busy,” or otherwise occupied learning about electronics…  I’ve been working on building a Digital Readout (DRO) using Yuriy’s Toys design and Android app. The short version is here, the long version will be in a future post! (It’s not done yet.)

After soldering a bunch of things, making friends at Radioshack, cutting lots of wires, troubleshooting and solving issues, I believe I finally have a working DRO on my lathe. The Variable Frequency Drive (VFD) on the lathe causes a lot of issues with the readout being send over BlueTooth and I had to solve issues involving Electromagnetic Fields, and other crazy things like that that I do not know much of anything about. (Details… later.)

I’ve also been collecting the needed tooling to do the various things I want to do on my lathe. I’ve scored some nice deals on Craigslist and eBay, including some carbide boring bars, drills, a milling attachment (instead of making one), collets, etc etc. I’d say I’m about 100% tooled up to do what I want, but I still need to get the lathe back into position and put back together after the DRO adventures.

I just wanted to keep this blog going and making this short post will give me a jump off point for the next “real” post with pictures and details. I know somewhere out there someone will read one of these posts and get a piece of information they needed to correct any of the long list of issues I’ve had. So if that’s you, stay tuned!

DK