Euro machinery hacks, mods, and add-ons...

[Brian Lamb]

The real difficulty in making digital stops is how to incorporate the pull out fence extension and make it work. There is a bunch of additional engineering to put a second tape on the inner extrusion tube and add a head to track it while the extension pulls out. The more I play with making my own, the more i realize that 3K is likely the price point to make it worthwhile for a manufacturer. Dave

Dave, Not as difficult as you think, just need two units. One digital stop fits on the regular cross cut fence, reads out to the end of the fence extrusion. Your extendable portion would have to have a u-shaped stop that when closed, reaches at least to the furthest point of the regular digital stop. Then you mount the read head above the extending portion on the main fence and read the mag strip mounted on the extending portion.

These units are programmable for the direction it reads and they can be set to start at some specific dimension when "zeroed". So, say your extension stop makes it to 58.118" from the blade when fully closed, set that as a parameter that when you close the extended portion and zero the scale, you'd be reading 58.118". Then any extension of the stop, just adds to the base number of 58.118".

Yes, it would take a bit of messing about to calibrate things, but no hill for a stepper... as they say. With the Fiama units, you are at roughly $200-$275 per readout (depends upon integrated read head or wired) and about $100 per meter of the mag banding, which by the way is about 10mm wide and 2mm thick if I remember correctly. I have one of the read heads and a small chunk of the band here for prototyping purposes, looks like a quality product, we are excited to get into production with them.

[Jim Becker]

Brian, that zeroing thing for accommodating the extension is a great suggestion!

[Brian Lamb]

I went out this morning and took some pictures kind of mocking up the DRO and banding. I have a 2001 vintage Felder KF700, so each machine would be different, but these things are small, versatile and the banding is easy to double stick tape down just about anywhere.

This picture shows the banding on the fence extension, DRO sitting about where you would mount it. This application would need a unit with the remote sensor. I would actually mount the banding on the opposite surface of the pull out rod, and machine into the bottom rear of the fence extrusion to mount the read head. Not how everybody could do it because I have the machinery to do it, but this kind of shows how versatile these can be.

Oh, I will comment on the necessity of this portion. I pull out that extension a couple times a year, 99% of all my work gets cut up with the stops on the regular portion of the fence. So given the cost to mount a second DRO unit, I'd probably just use the existing tape and deal with the DRO on the portion of the fence I use 99% of the time.

IMG_1390.jpg

This picture shows how it could mount next to or on top of a modified fence stop, mag banding slides right into the recessed area for the tape

IMG_1391.jpgIMG_1392.jpg

Next two show where the magnetic sensor is on the all in one unit, and the mounting faces

IMG_1393.jpgIMG_1394.jpg

[Erik Loza]

...Oh, I will comment on the necessity of this portion. I pull out that extension a couple times a year, 99% of all my work gets cut up with the stops on the regular portion of the fence. So given the cost to mount a second DRO unit, I'd probably just use the existing tape and deal with the DRO on the portion of the fence I use 99% of the time...

Ditto for my experience. In fact, when Dave mentioned this, I actually had to scratch my head and think about how SCM does it when you telescope the extension. The Invincible machines communicate distance wirelessly with each DRO, so it does not matter where they are but I need to go back and look at the Nova drawings. On the shop slider, we rarely are doing any crosscut so wide that you have to telescope out the extension. I could see it being more of an issue on machines with short stroke sliders, where the extrusion is not as long but on 8.5' or 10.5' machines, I can't remember actually missing that ability.

Erik

[Erik Loza]

All the Euro machines have Metric dust ports. Typically 100mm or 120mm. No need to pay for tin couplers (unless you want to). Rubber sewer pipe fittings from Lowes/HD work fine and will run you about $10. "Fernco" is one brand.




Erik

[Chris Padilla]

I have 6" hose for my DC fitting to my j/p so I had Oneida make a 120 mm to 6" (or ~4 3/4" to 152.4 mm) coupler for me. I like the idea of the Fernco coupling as 4" and 100 mm are pretty darn close to each other...which is what I assume those two are in the picture.

[David Davies]

Any taper jigs?

[Martin Wasner]

All the Euro machines have Metric dust ports. Typically 100mm or 120mm. No need to pay for tin couplers (unless you want to). Rubber sewer pipe fittings from Lowes/HD work fine and will run you about $10. "Fernco" is one brand.




Erik

That's a good idea. I've been using duct tape wrapped around the port to make it bigger then just sticking a reducer on it to get it back down to whatever size.

[Jim Becker]

Martin, the Fernco rubber connectors slip relatively snugly on the 120mm ports that are common on Euro machinery and a 5" hose clamps over them perfectly as illustrated in that photo that Erik posted. It really is an elegant and inexpensive solution!

[John Lankers]

Any taper jigs?

Not really, you can see several ways to cut tapers in the pic and they're all repeatable - another option would be with Fritz and Franz.
Edit: NEVER use the Kreg clamp with the shaper!!!

[Bill Adamsen]

I added a bayonet quick connect (Spiral J-Lock) to the 120mm port using a Fernco. I find that approach fast for switching dc hose on a Euro JP.

[peter gagliardi]

I have a simple add-on to my back fence fixture for the shaper.
I have a centerline that is lined up with the spindle centerline marked, and I can use the top of the board as a table and swing and cut partial arcs or perfect circles of various radii. Either by moving the pin, which happens to be a 1/8" x 1" steel dowel pin friction fit into an undersize hole drilled on that centerline, or pulling out the outboard support arm to cut up to about a 90" circle as is, or add on to swing larger arcs.

image.jpg here you see two locations at the pencil ends, and the dowel pin in the outer hole.
image.jpg

This is much nicer than swinging a router on a trammel for most work, and you can use the feeder as well.

[Jordan Lane]

i'm curious about the miter bar you used in the slot of the slider.....what did you use? , i been looking all over for a solution on my Felder

[Jordan Lane]

ooops that was a question for John Lankers

[John Lankers]

ooops that was a question for John Lankers

I think it's a Rockler, I will get you more details tomorrow.