Smw3d ox tram question,
How do I tram the spindle? I am getting ridges along the X axis and the Y cuts seem good.
There is one row of non adjustable wheels on your plates. They should be square. Mine were amazingly square. If you free up the adjustments on the gantry plates and tighten then so as to make sure the non adjustable wheels are in contact it should fix it. Otherwise, there is a tiny bit of play when you tighten the x axis to the plates and that might have a little twist.
You could make a tramming tool with some scraps and two dial indicators to measure more accurately. Without any tools I was able to get to within .002” on a 3” flycutter.
This is something I have been putting off for a while. My plan was to just use my fly cutter to “flatten” my spoilboard after I added the holes for the hold downs. Perhaps I need to rethink that plan.
@SirGeekALot yes, looking back I’d rather have planned the holes, bed leveling and laser grid and have the holes proportional in each grid for consistency.
Used my laser to mark a grid on the spoiler board.https://plus.google.com/photos/102259857059828346431/albums/6657181188515298001/6657181196013664386
@Awesome_Coder Nice! I have a 500mw blue diode laser I’ve been thinking about ripping out of its box and putting on my Ox.
I use mine for 6” of depth so tramming was really useful.
Resurrecting an old thread… @Awesome_Coder, did tram improve for you?
I’m assembling my OX, and discovered that the spindle was substantially out of tram, by a few degrees in both axes, so that from top to bottom of the spindle there was over 2mm difference.
I disassembled the gantry truck, loosened the spacer blocks and their attached wheels for the Z axis, and held the spacer blocks away from the center while re-tightening the screws, after which the blocks indicated square to the plate. When I re-assembled it, the blocks were square to the table, and the spindle is very close (I think there’s a little variance in the spindle clamps, maybe around .1mm but I didn’t fetch my feeler gauge set to be more accurate.)
Then I slightly loosed the screws holding 2*20x60 beam across the top, and put a large vice grip across the top pointing backward and used it to put leverage against the weight of the gantry truck, pressing lightly while slowly tightening the screws, checking square in Y repeatedly. I used a try square through the empty spindle clamps, indicating against the inside of the clamps, using tension on paper between the try square and the spindle clamp to true up closer than I could by eye, so I didn’t have to worry about bending feeler gauges while testing. (Having locked the two 20x60s together solidly may have been important to this working well.)
I still wouldn’t use a 3" fly cutter with it, but the 1" cutter I own stands at least half a chance of being good enough. If I need to touch up the tram any further, I’ll probably put shims inside the spindle clamps; I think that the Z travel is now as straight as I’m likely to get it.
(I’m not done assembling it yet.)
Late reply… Yes, I ended up adjusting the tension on my wheels and added some foil to one side of my spindle mounts.
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