Newbie- How to make everything square and parallel

[FandZ]

Originally Posted by jsheerin No - you don't move the axis with the motors. You just rotate the indicator in the spindle. The assumption is your table surface is flat and plane and thus moving the spindle around in x and y is unnecessary. The longer the arm the indicator is on (and the further away from the spindle's center line), the bigger the errors shown on the indicator. Ideally you would rotate the spindle and the indicator reading would never change as you swept a complete circle. If your z axis is not perfectly perpendicular to your table, then when you compare readings from +x and -x, there will be some difference and you can shim as appropriate. Same for y, although typically you would unbolt things and tap in the alignment in the y direction the way most router are built.

I should have posted my question more clearly. I was asking about the actual surfacing of the spoil board I was wondering if there was a command in mach 3 to do it. Or how most people go about doing it.

[jsheerin]

Oh. Well hopefully it will help someone else...

I just programmed surfacing a rectangle in my cam program when I first did mine. Once you've done it once, you just reuse the same program later.

[rlwoodjr]

That is a fantastic way to check the z axis....

Originally Posted by jsheerin No - you don't move the axis with the motors. You just rotate the indicator in the spindle. The assumption is your table surface is flat and parallel to the x and y axes already and thus moving the spindle around in x and y is unnecessary. If your z axis is out, there will just be ridges or scallops in the spoilboard from surfacing it (how big depending on how far out of alignment the z axis is). The longer the arm the indicator is on (and the further away from the spindle's center line), the bigger the errors shown on the indicator. Ideally you would rotate the spindle and the indicator reading would never change as you swept a complete circle. If your z axis is not perfectly perpendicular to your table, then when you compare readings from +x and -x, there will be some difference and you can shim as appropriate. Same for y, although typically you would unbolt things and tap in the alignment in the y direction the way most router are built.

[TOTALLYRC]

Originally Posted by FandZ I should have posted my question more clearly. I was asking about the actual surfacing of the spoil board I was wondering if there was a command in mach 3 to do it. Or how most people go about doing it.

All you do is write some g-code to surface (or pocket as my cam software calls it) the entire surface of the spoil board. This is dependent on the travels of each particular machine.

Mike

[jsheerin]

Here's an example of aligning some rails:
http://www.5bears.com/cnc08.htm