How to Mount TouchDRO

Before you can start using TouchDRO on your milling machine or lathe, you will need to figure out a way to mount the tablet. This is one of the common questions on the TouchDRO sub-forum; so, in this article, I will show you how we mounted the tablet in our shop and guide you through making your own version. For this, we will use an off-the-shelf monitor mounting arm as a donor, and a protective case with some custom parts to make flexible and convenient mounts for a mill and a lathe.

DRO Placement

First, you need to decide where you want to place your DRO display. Traditional DROs often are mounted behind the headstock [on a lathe] or on the right side of the milling machine. Those locations are mostly holdovers from the olden days, when a DRO was nothing more than a position counter, and the machinist didn't interact with it much. These are not the best locations for a modern digital readout:

On a lathe, a more convenient (and much safer) place for a DRO is on top and in front of the headstock. This places the DRO into a spot where you can look at it without losing track of the cutter, and don't need to reach over the spinning chuck to press a button.
On a mill, it's more convenient to place the DRO close to the front of the head, on the side opposite from your dominant hand. For instance, if you are a right-handed person, you would mount the DRO on the left side of the head. This way you won't need to turn your head much to look at the screen, and can use your left hand to press buttons while moving the table or the quill with your right hand.

Where you decide to mount the tablet will dictate the type of mount you will use. With TouchDRO, you have a lot of flexibility. Unlike physical buttons on a traditional DRO, TouchDRO's touch screen doesn't require any force to click the on-screen buttons. All that is required is a light tap, so you won't need to hold the display or rely on a solid mounting arm to prevent it from moving. This means that you can use a much more flexible mount.

In the end, it's really a matter of personal preference, but please consider basic safety. You don't want to be reaching over a spinning chuck or a fly cutter to get to the DRO.

Parts and Materials

Tablet Case

In a machine shop, a protective case will go a long way in helping your tablet to live a long and happy life. As an added bonus, the case will serve as the main part of the tablet mount.

We will be using a generic case from Amazon (link) shown above. It is relatively inexpensive and has a swivel hand strap that will come handy. This particular case comes with a screen protector, but I didn't like it much. The plastic sheet muddied up the display and interfered with the touch screen. A tempered glass screen protector looks and feels much better. A two-pack can be had for under $10 (link).

Dual Monitor Stand with VESA Plates

The second part of our DRP mount will be made out of a basic dual monitor mount from Amazon.

This particular mount will serve as a donor for two DRO mounting brackets. The column and one of the arms will go to the lathe, and the other arm will be used on the milling machine.

Attaching the Mounting Arms

Let's start by attaching the monitor arm to the milling machine and lathe. Now that we have a way to hold the tablet, it's time to attach the arms to the milling machine. For the lathe, we will use the post, one of the arms, and the clamp that holds the arm to the post. We will use the other arm for the milling machine. Let's start with the lathe.

Milling Machine

As I mentioned earlier, we will be using the second monitor arm to make a DRO mount for the milling machine. "Make" is probably too strong of a word here. All we need to do is fabricate a bracket and attach the monitor arm to the mill.

To attach the arm to the milling machine, you will need to fabricate a small bracket out of some thick sheet metal similar to the one shown in thephoto below. This particular bracket is a leftover from a different monitor arm, but it's easy enough to make one from scratch.

If you are unsure where you want your DRO, try clamping the arm to the mill in a different position and see what you like best. I prefer to have mine on the left side of the machine. I'm right-handed, so this arrangement makes it easy to see the readouts without losing sight of the cutter. With the arm attached to the mill, the end result looks like this:

Lathe

With one of the monitor arms removed, the result will be similar to the photo below.

This particular monitor arm came with a sturdy right-angle mounting bracket.

If you own a modern lathe, chances are the headstock's back surface is flat, or there is a flat spot on the top. On our lathe, there were two existing holes in the headstock. To avoid drilling new holes, I made an aluminum adapter plate and mounted the bracket to it. Then, using a bandsaw, I cut down the column to a manageable length and attached it to the lathe (as shown below).

With the monitor arm securely attached to the lathe, we can now attach the tablet. On our lathe, the finished product looks like this:

Attaching the Tablet to The Mount

The tablet case we got is not designed for attachment to a VESA mount, so we will need to be creative here. You can drill four holes in the back of the case and attach the tablet to the VESA mount plate. The mount we are using has detachable plates, which will even allow you to move the tablet between your machines, if needed.

Since we wanted to easily swap tablets for testing or move a tablet between the mill and the lathe, I designed and 3D-printed a simple adapter shown below.

3D printed quick-disconnect VESA adapter

The larger plate attaches to the VESA mount, and the smaller plate will be screwed to the tablet's protective case. The tablet will be held in place using a shallow-angle wedge. This provides a strong and reliable mount, and the tablet is easy to remove. Since we picked a case with a swivel hand strap, we also get a convenient way to switch between landscape and portrait modes.

The VESA adapter plate attaches to the monitor arm with four M4 screws, as shown below.

To attach the smaller plate to the tablet, we will need to make a small modification to the case. Namely, we will drill four small holes in the swivel strap holder and attach the plate to it using four M3 screws.

We checked several cases that use a similar design, and the hole pattern shown above should clear the raised parts in the swivel body. The end result will look something like the photo below.

Other Ideas

If you are using a different tablet or can't find a suitable protective case, there are a few other options that might work for you. For example, for several years we used this sort of mount:

The plate is attached to the tablet's case using some heavy-duty 3M double-sided tape (the kind you can find at the auto parts store). Our mounts are 3D printed, but something similar is very easy to machine out of aluminum or some kind of durable plastic.

The magnet embedded into the mount-side of the plate is off-center, and there is a similar magnet on the tablet side. The magnets are arranged to repel each other, providing a latching action. This mounting system provides a quick way to switch between horizontal and vertical orientation, but holds the tablet in place very securely.

Conclusion

We have used a very similar setup in our shop for several years, and it worked very well. The monitor arm is sturdy, but offers enough adjustability to move the tablet around as needed. The ability to quickly switch between landscape and portrait orientations is very convenient. This way, you can use the tablet in portrait mode for general machining and, when using the "virtual layout" feature, switch to landscape mode to get better magnification.

I hope that this gave you some ideas on how to attach the TouchDRO tablet to your lathe and/or the milling machine. Obviously, this is just one possibility. You can build the whole thing from scratch, use a different monitor arm, or build a similar setup with a different attachment system.