Keith kindly sent me a replacement gib which also doesn't work quite right. Not enough range of adjustment still.
Now that I've got two bad gibs, I wonder if Syil has economized on gib manufacturing a little too far. Both of my gibs do not present planar faces to the vertical way. There are bench grinding marks all over on a critical friction surface.
I put some permanent marker ink onto my gibs and moved the travel up and down and find that less than 30% of the total gib area makes contact with the dovetail.
The gib is so badly made that it's probably about 0.005"-0.01" out of plane. The ends are radiused which turns them into chip scoops which would pack chips into the ends of the gibs instead of pushing them off.
Are other users finding that their vertical axis gibs are out of plane? With such a rough surface on the sliding face, I have to wonder if the taper on the gib matches the taper in my mill head. The contact between my gib and way is biased strongly towards one end so I suspect that my gib taper does not measure the taper in the mill head.
I'd really like to give up on Syil made gibs and get my own professionally made on a surface grinder, but I'm not sure I can gauge the taper quite right. I'm guessing that measuring the gap between a pair of balls sitting in the mill dovetail should work.
Does anyone else have crappy gibs in their X4s?  |