I have removed the Wixey I was using on this fence because I have never been happy with the installation, it had no backlight and it was a PIA to calibrate. As I have gotten older I found because of the lack of a backlight it simply became too hard to read. Dennis showed in his Hooked on Wood videos a DRO that is perfect for the job during his mitre saw bench build so I bought some, it has a backlight and calibration is dead easy and if you have the fine adjustable fence the read strip fits perfectly in the face of it and is undetectable. It does have one disadvantage though and that is if the rip fence head is tilted up to clear the table the calibration is lost when the read sensor loses contact with the read strip.

This video shows how it is fitted though he used a different brand of DRO



Dennis shows the DRO I used in this video. Two DRO's cost me $175 landed



I have now worked out how to put the read strip on the outrigger fence without it being seen so that is the next project. I fortunately have a second CC fence on the slider, my saw came without the outrigger and I added it later and when that is done you finish up with a second fence. I showed the two fences in Derek's thread and using a length of 20 series extrusion and setting the flip stops to the same dimension a parallel fence is made. This could have some advantages as it might be feasible to use it to cut long tapers with the appropriate stop settings at each end.

Getting back to the read strip on the CC fence I suggested to a forum member that if the read strip is laid under the existing measuring tape it might be read by the sensor and he did the experiment and it works so I am going to fit a DRO to each CC fence and calibrate both to match each other. A few pictures of my own set up are shown here, the housing the DRO sits on is 6mm MDF and it became necessary because I did not want to cut the lead to the sensor so all the excess lead is rolled up in the housing. In the last shot the stainless steel covering strip for the sensor read strip can be seen in the face of the extrusion the rip fence measuring tape is on. I saw suggested over at FOG that if the fence has to be removed the best thing to do is put a stop on the cast iron deck, note the reading on the DRO and use the stop to calibrate the DRO when it is back on the saw, I have yet to try it but in theory it sounds good. These DRo's do not have an off switch but Dennis noted that the battery should still last over a year.

K3_DRO_Housing.jpg K3 DRO Sensor.jpg K3 DRO 2.jpg K3 DRO 1.jpg