Display Stand

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9fingers

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I seem to get some strange projects!

For the last couple of days I've been making a display stand for woodworking show purposes.

It needs to display the item complete with a few pages of publicity.
It needs to be stable, rigid and yet be light enough to carry maybe from car park to display.

I mainly used 9mm mdf lipped with some oak off cuts

IMG_1650.jpg


On the back are shallow dados with mdf braces glued in. The supports hold the panel at 30 from vertical to allow the punters to see the goods. Some more offcuts of oak form a couple of feet.

IMG_1652.jpg



So what is this all for I hear you ask?

A few month ago I evaluated some digital readout scales that were available in the US but not in UK.
I found them very good and yet economically priced and the best feature is that the display is remote on about 4 foot of cable.
This means the scales can be fitted onto machines in inaccessible places with only the readout in view.

Here is one of the 900mm scales fitted to the display stand.

IMG_1653.jpg


This is the read head with the bracket used to pick up on the moving part of the machine eg saw table fence.

IMG_1655.jpg


and the display which has magnets on the back as well as screw holes to mount almost anywhere.

IMG_1654.jpg


I'll be at The European Woodworking Show if you require further info.

Hope to see you there.

Bob


Mod Edit: Text edited by CHJ
 
I'd be interested in one of those scales, very interested, if I could enter a figure into it.

Let me give an example. Supposing I cut a length of wood on sliding table saw, and I measure it at, say, 213.5mm. Now if I could then enter that number into the scale before moving the stop, I would then have the scale 'zeroed in'.

But if the only way of zeroing it was to move the stop against the blade and pressing zero, that is not going to be so accurate, and on some sliding tables the stop wouldn't reach the blade anyway. So is what I describe possible with that type of scale?

Mod Edit: CHJ.
 
Well after much hoo-ha, my thread has been reinstated but with critical information removed which is the consensus decision from the Mods
So any one interested in this product will read it but be unable to find out who the vendor is via this forum.

I have to accept that this action arises from the correct interpretation of the rules but the result is clearly daft and the implication is that in the future whenever we find information about a product that we find useful, we are not allowed to mention the supplier without running the risk of post deletion.

Bob
 
I take it Jacob didnt make mod then - :lol: :lol:

Seriously - nice to see you back Bob.

I suppose anyone interested could always send you a PM.

It's a difficult line to walk in terms of the rules, etc. I suppose if one posted a link to something or someone which has been done countless times in the past to whom they have no connection other than perhaps being a customer (existing or potential) - can't and haven't seen any issues with that.

With the supplier of that kit - it's a little grey as he runs a forum and sells kit.

Nonetheless very nice to see you back!

Dibs
 
Lord Kitchener":1keic34v said:
I'd be interested in one of those scales, very interested, if I could enter a figure into it.

You can do it with a glass or magnetic scale and single axis read out but does cost more. Have a look at this

Though I think the scale could be used in conjunction with a Shumateck readout that can have a size entered.

J
 
jasonB":53weqzqa said:
Lord Kitchener":53weqzqa said:
I'd be interested in one of those scales, very interested, if I could enter a figure into it.

You can do it with a glass or magnetic scale and single axis read out but does cost more. Have a look at this

Though I think the scale could be used in conjunction with a Shumateck readout that can have a size entered.

J


Exactly so Jason. It was in fact reading about the Shumatech that led me to these scales
I imported one for evaluation at my own expense and spoke of it to a small business who has now decided to import and stock these. Shumatec comes as a kit and does have a UK retailer but based on recent experience I dare not mention their name.

Bob
 
Lord Kitchener":3jepcp82 said:
I'd be interested in one of those scales, very interested, if I could enter a figure into it.

Let me give an example. Supposing I cut a length of wood on sliding table saw, and I measure it at, say, 213.5mm. Now if I could then enter that number into the scale before moving the stop, I would then have the scale 'zeroed in'.

It looks like Bob's one does this (it has ABS and SET buttons), but even if it doesn't, I think you can get almost the same effect with all of these digital readouts...

[aside]I'm profoundly left-handed and it's a dexterous world out there. Sigh. One of my annoyances is the scales on measures - steel tapes, rulers, framing squares, vernier callipers and so on are all fitted with right-handed scales - you non-sinister people probably never give it a second's thought![/aside]

Anyway, I have a couple of digital verniers, and I can't read them easily when they're measuring some types of object. I have evolved a method of using them that gets me results without dropping them:
  1. zero the scale,
  2. apply the callipers to the target. I can't read it because it'll be facing the wrong way,
  3. press zero again,
  4. remove the callipers and close them completely.
The measurement now shows up as a negative value, and it doesn't matter if I bumped the callipers whilst removing them from the target!

Every linear scale I've seen will do this (I've no doubt they all use the same chipset, or clones of each other). You could do the same with the one Bob's mentioned, such that your correct measurement showed as zero on the scale, rather than the distance.

This gives you effectively what you want: say you wanted 214, but got 213.5 (measured). Zero at your original reading, move out 0.5mm and re-zero. You've now got an accurate distance, admittedly with slightly increased error (+/- the least significant digit x2).

Or you could pay a lot more for a different chipset produced in much smaller quantities and type it in.

PS: Very glad you're back, Bob.
 
I don't think you can get the board from that source now Bob has to come straight from Scott and I have read supply can be irratic.

J
 
jasonB":32wn5rxt said:
I don't think you can get the board from that source now Bob has to come straight from Scott and I have read supply can be irratic.

J

Thanks for the update Jason. It rather looks like that supplier is rapidly getting out to the scales market. YADRO seems dead too as last time I heard, Nick Muller was not responding to emails regarding YADRO

I would suspect that very few UKW members would want to be building up Shumatech modules.

Bob
 
Eric, the company I linked to for the glass scales also do left handed callipers.

Although Bobs ones have an Absolute setting there are no buttons to enter an actual figure so it won't do what Lord K wants.

By entering a size the scale then becomes a measure, say you then want to cut a bit of wood 450mm long, you just slide the stop until it reads 450mm and lock it off.

J
 
Jason,

Thanks for the calliper link! In every respect apart from the sticky down the bar, it's identical to one of the RH sets I have - on the Christmas list, definitely.

I take your point, too, about absolute calibration. I can see why LK would want that in a production environment.

My original concern was that all these scales, presumably all using the same general arrangement of a shaft encoder and counter, suffer from slippage to some extent. I wouldn't trust them for consistency over a long period without indexing them regularly.

But looking again (I missed your link initially!) I can see that Bob's one, and the ones you linked to, don't use the same technology as the cheaper callipers (like wot I have). Assuming they thus don't need regular indexing, that's a game-changer, and absolute calibration is realistic.

Bob, could you enlighten us - what exactly is the measurement technology on the ones you've been looking at?
 
I'm not aware of any commercial digital readout systems that suffer from slippage in a mechanical sense. There is always the possibility of strong electrical interference making the electronics go wrong I suppose.

The scales I have been looking at use the same capacitive, vernier-like technology that the ubiquitous digital calipers use as shown in Jason's link. The display has a few more buttons and will display in imperial both decimal and fractions as well as decimal fractions.
They claim to be able to keep up with motion rates of up to 3m/s. Which is fast enough for everything I can think of wanting.
Above these rates - I suppose the errors could be described a slippage.

Bob
 
There is some information here
http://www.capsense.com/capsense-wp.pdf section 3.4
and also on the YADRO site although before getting excited at the YADRO project, the author Nick seems to have gone to ground and the UK agent has no further stock of the interface boards.
There is also some info on the Shumatech site but the supply of the hardware is also a bit sporadic
I expect a websearch will find more references.

HTH

Bob
 
After just a quick glance these items seem to be the same as those from Wixey. In fact except for the name change on the product I can't see much difference.

Are these in fact the same. Churned out by an Asian factory in the millions.
Alan
 
The Wixey scales I found do not resemble the ones that I was writing about and the resolution/accuracy is much poorer on the Wixey units which I found rather surprising given their market position.

I can only conclude that they are not the same either visually or technically.

hth

Bob
 
The Wixy ones have a different read head.

Warco do/did sell exactly the same as the Igaging just a different lable.

Arcs ones don't have the remote readout and having used similar add on readouts to the ones they do in the past they are not that good.

J
 
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