I have just registered as I am often trying to mend stuff,
I find a slap and a poke with my finger does the job, or the thing
gets assigned to the bin. I am hoping for some advice on electronics problems.
I have just successfully repaired the non-working ultrasonic cleaner I
bought on ebay and feel well chuffed[OK slightly amazed as well].
I now have to mend the Newall digital readout for my milling machine.

 

I find a slap and a poke with my finger does the job
I now have to mend the Newall digital readout for my milling machine.

I couldn't find that method in the manual?
What is wrong with the DRO?
They are a fairly high end make.
Max.

 

I couldn't find that method in the manual?
What is wrong with the DRO?
They are a fairly high end make.
Max.

The DRO [DROs] I have are pretty old. One has 1989 on the main board the
other has 1983. One failed in 2003, it showed random bit's on the display[vfd],
but if left on a few days it settled down; it was left on all the time until
2006 when it failed again, but I have forgotten what failed. I asked about
fixing it on an engineering forum and someone offered me a working one
for 20 quid; so I bought it and have asked if anyone has one for sale now,
but it's been a week and I haven't been offered another.
Last year, a month before I had to have the DRO, it failed. It read SF[signal failure]
on both axis and the error wouldn't clear. I assumed as the error just
appeared on both axis it was unlikely to be a scale problem. I swapped
boards around from the first DRO and got it working, I think I swapped the
'not an axis' board[not sure what to call it] and it worked.
I need the DRO in a couple of weeks. A month or so ago I switched it off
for some reason, I switched it back on last week and there was no display
at all, I tried swapping a few boards again but no luck, poking it with my
finger wasn't to successful either. The error is deeper than no display as
there is a pair of LEDs to show if it's in metric or imperial and pressing the
mode button doesn't change these, which it should.
I can't see any thing wrong with the capacitors, but have been advised in
the past to replace all electrolytics on old kit and all my kit is old, so I will
replace those and I could see the leads on a microprocessors looked a bit
green, so I pulled it from it's socket and the 40 pin dip socket needs
replacing or cleaning and a few terminals replacing.

I have no idea how to ask about any of this really, "help my circuit doesn't work"
isn't going to get me very far. I suppose I should move this and start with
something like "what do I need to ask?"

Newall scales are pretty groovy. But there is only one alternative readout unit which
seems to work with the scales, it is cheaper than a Newall readout, but still more than the
chinese readouts for optical scales.