Hello all, I attempted my first surfacing operation on my lead 1515 on a piece of mdf and I’m getting a decent amount of these “waves” on the board. I was told to do this before tramming the machine (which I don’t know how to do). Looking from the front left of the machine, the left side of the cut is much shallower than the right. The right side of the cut is much deeper. I believe I can see which was the x axis need adjusted, but I have no idea how to do it. How can I go about adjusting my x axis to fix this?
One thing I did on mine when I built it was -- prior to surfacing for the first time -- I used a square to adjust the spindle mount until it was square with the spoil board on both the X axis and the Y axis. I was lucky and mine needed no further adjustment. I am confused by your picture. To me it appears that I am looking at it from the left side. If I were looking from the front those lines would be going from left to right back and forth...right? If so, are you saying the front (side with the extraction hose) is cutting slightly deeper (right side of the cuts?), or are you saying the rear of the spindle is cutting deeper? If it is the front, how is your dust extraction hose supported, and how heavy is it? If it is not supported well, there could be a lot of weight hanging out front that is putting some twist in the x axis making the front of the endmill cut deeper. What happens if you remove your hose and dust boot? Does the problem go away, or at least is it reduced? Here is a video that may help.
I’ve watched a bunch of videos on YouTube about tramming, but my biggest question is what do I physically adjust on my actual machine to square it up? OpenBuilds doesn’t have a video on how to make adjustments and I emailed them and they did respond but gave me a generic “adjust everything until it’s correct” response. My plan was to use precision shims for the y axis. Do you think I can get away with shims for the y axis and loosening the mount and twisting the spindle mount about the x axis until it is parallel then tightening? And yes the picture is from the left side of the machine. You are correct with your understanding of the orientation. Standing at the front of the machine, the cut is deep to shallow from front to back(on each surfacing cut). Standing at the left side of the machine, the cut is deep to shallow from right to left (wow I hope that all makes sense) Also, the dust hose is very well supported and I really don’t see the weight of that being an issue but I didn’t think of that so i appreciate you bringing it up. I’m just really intimidated by this thing as it’s my first cnc and I want it to be setup as good as I can, but i also jus really want to use it and have it be setup finally. Haha
You may have to loosen the spindle mount screws and twist and shim. On my new lathe I built, I had to shim an axis, and I was lucky that two pieces of aluminum tape for ductwork (0.06mm thick) did the trick. One thing that scares me about totally breaking down my existing CNC Router and rebuilding it is the whole tramming thing because right now, everything is working great.
I was thinking I’d have to loosen and adjust all of the screws and brackets holding up the entire x axis, but if I can do everything from the spindle mount that seems a lot more doable to me. You had said you squared up everything before you put yours together, this might be a stupid question, but where did you check for square at? Like the router to the bed? The only square I have that I actually trust to be square in my garage is a 6” incra square.
If your spindle is square with your X axis (in both directions), then the x axis could be lower on one side and you would still be ok because once you surface your spoil board it will be flat when compared to the bottom of the x axis beams. It may be thinner on one side, but it would not really matter because no matter where you put your work piece, it will always be the same distance away. That being said, if for some reason your x axis has a "twist" forward, shimming may not be enough and you may indeed need to loosen some screws on the gantry plates. But give shimming a try first. One quick question, when you look at the X axis Cbeam is it tight against your upright 8020 v-slot pieces on both the top and bottom? On my lathe which I built with the LEAD High Z kit and an additional Cbeam, I did not notice that there was a small gap in the bottom where the Cbeams were to be joined to the upright 8020 v-slot pieces. So, I loosened everything and used a clamp to pull everything tight so I new my cbeams were square to the uprights in hopes I could avoid some shimming later.
Update: I bought some precision steel shims and 123 blocks. I had to basically take the z axis completely apart and i shimmed the y axis forward. The axis was way out. I shimmed it up as much as I could at the moment. I was just eager to see if I was actually making a difference. I’m happy to say after a few hours of tweaking I got it 95% dialed in. Thank your everyone! This is a huge learning process but rewarding to see results.
