New Taig setup and a few questions

[daanmuller]

Hi,

just set up my first cnc mill, a Taig from Deepgroove with Gecko G540 driver.

I just bolted the thing together using a square to line up the headstock, no other adjustments so far.

I finished my first testpiece in delrin today. Round 3D object modeled in Viacad and then through Vectric Cut3D for the G-Code on to Mach3. Just did the top half to see how it's working out. 2 passes, the first with .125 inch endmill, the final pass with a .04 inch endmill.

Everything looks great, great fun to watch it do it's thing.

Now for the questions:

the part I cut is circular with a diameter of 45.2 mm (1.78 inch) The milled part is between 45.2 mm and 45.08 mm in diameter. So it's a little eggshaped 0.12 mm (0.004 inch) off at most.

I assume that by sweeping the table with a dial and finetuning the headstock I might get better results and some may be due to backlash?

Since I use only a small part in the center of the table for my parts (3 inch wide and deep and 1 inch high max) I could tighten the backlash nut really firm to cut on backlash?

thanks, Daan

[Crevice Reamer]

Hi Daan. Welcome to the Zone!

You may need to calibrate the axes.

Zero the axes. Make an axis move say 100mm on Mach DRO. Measure that it ACTUALLY moved 100mm. If not then adjust steps per mm up or down to get it right. Repeat on other axes.

CR.

[daanmuller]

Thanks!

That sounds like a good idea, why didnt I think of that. So easy to overlook an adjustable bit with all the different components involved in a cnc mill.

[Hirudin]

I tried to measure my runout, it was around 3.5 thousandths on one of the axes (I don't remember which one). I'm pretty sure I measured it accurately, but since I'm such a newb (and trying to teach myself/learn from here) I'm going to do it again just in case. Also, I should mention that I didn't do any adjustments on the gibs and whatnot, the mill was straight from TAIG.

Since your circle is off by 4 thousandths that seems like you might have about the same amount of runout as I do.

[SpeedsCustom]

Do not just use the center of the table. Work all sides of the tables, especially the x-axis. I like to set up different parts weekly from the right side to the left and back into the middle always rotating.

-Jason