The first thing I'd check would be the adjusment of the gibs - especially the Z axis. Given that your machine is ex-education and hasn't done many hours, it's unlikely that the slides are worn, but on old machines this is common and would show up like this. If the gibs are properly adjusted and there's no appreciable wear, then remove the table, stone all the surfaces remount and check again. If that's not fixed it check that the head isn't tilted forward due to foriegn matter under the mating surfaces - you'll need a test bar. If the tilt persists, then it's wear causing the geometry of the machine to be out. I'd shim rather than scrape the table. If you scrape the table to correct the machine's geometry it will not only vary over the travels but will trip-up you or a future owner if the machine's ways are remachined.
Hi Paul, that is also my experience. I was blown away when he showed me that tramming tool. Surface ground all over, engraved, mounting hard ware and the clocks. I am looking forward to making the nice wooden case which this tool deserves. Mark
Luke - absolutely stunning work and most generous gift. Hugely inspiring. We all benefit from contributions like this as we collectively increase Mark’s ability to make even more entertaining and inspiring content.
Hi Mark ,what a wonder gift from Luke. Having installed a few (hundred) machining centers perhaps I have some useful advice. As beautifully made as the tramming device is, I would never use it , infact I have always used the indicatior base just as you have. what I never used is the dial indicator , they are way to stiffly sprung, instead I was taught to use a test indicator and gauge block. In my case (inch warning) a .005" indicator and a 1" gage block , the indicator has a long needle and a light spring. the surface of a gauge block is flawless especially compared to the bed surface. You can rotate the test indicator to the test spot and then slide the gauge block under it. Now for the rest of the machines geometry , do you have the factory inspection report? I have never touched a Maho or similar format machine personally But what you will find in the report is that they will have used a square to check the Z-Y and Z-X alignment of the table Z travel. this is done independant of the spindle. Also a spindle test bar will be mounted into the spindle to check its Z-Y and Z-X alignment similar to what tramming does. there are cylindrical squares that allow you to measure both x and y directions without having to reposition the square . You can actually use any reasonable accurate square , just turn the square 180 degrees and when you have zero at one end and identical +/- number at the other you are good.
Don't these machines have an active lubricating system with an oil pump constantly running? Maybe it you'll get a different reading when the machine is fired up instead of stopped cold.
@@meocats Yeah, but that lube unit runs ever startup, and every 20 minutes of operation, so by the time I had this all set up the lub unit had run multiple times.
For your y traming you need to recheck it with the table lowered. If you don't then you could be mislead and not knowingly having a compound error. For the x movement recheck with the table fully extended both ways. It will give you a great indication on way wear. And as a previous person said, first adjust your gibs.
Wonderfully made tramming head. Not to be a party pooper, I just never understood people's fascination with this dual indicator head. You have to make sure each indicator reads the same, which mean swinging it to the same spot, and zeroing them against each other. Using a single indicator (like your old method) to me seems more accurate, more foolproof, and no special tools required to use it. I don't know if this is only for hobbyists that like this dual head? I worked in a tool and die manual shop in the late 90's, and everyone there used a single indicator to tram the machines. I wonder if modern machine shops use this dual head system, or keep with the single head system. Edit to add, between uses, there is a chance the indicators will move. So I guess you have to re-check the zero each use. Just seems a lot more work than a single indicator.
I think Luke was trying to use up as many Dial indicators as possible. He could have made a four gauge unit, but that would have been too much machining :)
What you really want is to tram the spindle to the X and Y ways. I start with a flat disc that I indicate in by sweeping the X and Y. Then tram the head to that. With your setup it's even more important as your table mounting could be off. I would at least sweep the Y across the table to see if it is true to the Y slideways. Then you will know where the correction needs to be made.
I know I am a bit late with this, but most of the Deckels in the institute where I did my diploma thesis had 20 micron to 50 micron stainless steel foil shims to adjust the table sag. The alternative would have been to scrape the individual mounting surfaces of each of the tables in, which is fine if you have one machine to match one table to, but a lot of work if you have nine or ten machines with as many tables plus dividing heads which get swapped around a lot. Must have been good enough, though: some parts made on those ended up with the ESA's Rosetta mission ;-)
Thanks for the feedback on that Kai. I need to get in and have a look at the gibs on the vertical slide as well. Might have worn a bit loose there as well.
Before you can say that this is the table sagging and not the head nodding you must check the table front to back with an indicator directly in the spindle. It might be that the table is parallel to the Y axis, then it's the head nodding. In that case you'll either have to accept it or adjust the mounting surfaces in some way.
@@RotarySMP that too. But you should check for nod in the head too. My thiel duplex has about 2/100mm over 10cm of nod, and I can't fix it in any reasonable way.
Check the gibs. Check the head for NOD. Shim the head if you can, as it would be an easier job, if not, shim the table. If you find your gibs are still good, and shiming isn't working well, your next recourse is to take the table off, and scrape the mating surfaces flat, or send the table off to be resurfaced.
Saggy bed looks like a common problem in these machines, I have 2 of them in quite good state and both beds are slanted by around 0.1mm. Both Z and X slides introduce some play, but tightening the gibs did not help, only make motors hum louder due to increased resistance. Shimming the bed is not a good solution, the rigidity and vibration damping gets worse with less contact area, and the result is an artificially lifted table. The fastest and dirty solution would be to grind (and destroy) the table, which is probably perfectly perpendicular to it's mounting surface, or to attach some kind of middleman plate to the table and grind it. You could also disassemble and check the Z slide. My X and Y axes look like new but the Z slide and the gib is a bit worn, scraping would help, but I have absolutely no experience in that matter and have decided to leave it as is for now. Your Maho looks so great though it could be just gib tightening.
Before you go messing around with tilting the table, you should verify that the head isn't nodding. One method: Stick an indicator in the spindle and put something flat on the table, then run the indicator in the y direction on the flat. If your reading doesn't change as you sweep across the flat, that means your table is not tilted but your head may have nod in it. If the reading changes as you sweep, it means your table is tilted. You will need to fix the table tilt and then check again with your tram tool to see if you have any nod in the head.
rotate the table along a 45 degree axis so that the mounting surface is sitting up and the current top surface becomes its "base" attached to the knee. Then flycut the table base (which is now up). Then remount as before.
I don't know who Luke from Malta is, but he sure is a very generous person with the heart in the right place. And I think putting shims under the table is the easiest option... maybe...
Hi Rust, He sure is. Meeting people like Luke is the best part of doing social media like this. It has been pointed out that the table sag is likely not a table problem, but more likely misadjusted gibs. I need to check that.
Thanks for an informative video - a nicely made tool. Another surprinsingly sensitive method of sanity-checking your tramming is to look at the scratch pattern left by a fly cutter or face mill.
Would be happy to watch you do some more scraping if it comes to that, something therapeutic about it 😊 if you happen to come near coromandel town whilst back in the land of the long white cloud, flick me a message so I can get your autograph and shout you a beer! 👌 safe travels.
If the table is not adjustable, I would be tempted to use a large fly cutter to trim-tram it - so it is probably a good thing that I am nit allowed to have my own machine shop ;)
Amazing gift from Luke! That tramming tool looks perfect. And thanks for the images of a Lisbon tram - they've been a part of my landscape since I was born :-)
Hi Jose, I was done there week before last for work, and stayed on for the weekend to have a look around. What a cool city. It really is an incredible tool. I am planning the fine wooden storage box for it.
@@RotarySMP Glad you had a chance to visit and do some sightseeing. Despite being all my life in Lisbon, eight years ago I got tired of the busy city and went to the other side of the Tagus river, into a quieter little town, that is now growing too fast for my taste - can't stop progress, I guess 🙂 That impressive tool really deserves a carefully made wooden box, like in old times tools. Should be fun to watch the build 🙂
@@JoseSilveira-newhandleforYT We stayed in a place near Rossio, so it was pretty busy and bustling. We got really luck with the weather there that week.
@@RotarySMP That's pretty much the heart of Lisbon - lots of things happening all the time, and lots of people moving. Yep, you were lucky, as we have been experiencing bad weather intermittently, from cold to pouring rain, with a few good days in between. You hit the right moment 🙂
@@JoseSilveira-newhandleforYT My wife came over for the weekend, so it was cool to escape grey cold Vienna, for a few days of mild sunny spring weather. We even took the train up to Carvavelos and went for a nice walk on the beach there.
Hello Mark. Thanks for all your great videos. Some nice finds there, and a beautifully made traming tool. You didn’t mention it in your video, and you or other viewers likely already know this, but you should check / calibrate the tram tool first. Using a gauge block under the end of one indicator, zero the indicator, then rotate the tool 180 deg and zero the second indicator on top of the same gauge block, in the same place on the block and table. This way they use they now same reference point / zero. Worth checking a second or third time to make sure the results are repeatable. Then check the tram of the head. Some of the commercial versions of this tool use a neodymium magnet as the gauge block for zeroing. Just check to make sure it’s faces are parallel and it rests very level on the mill table. Take care in your upcoming travels.
1 thing about using this setup for measuring.... make sure you swing both clocks fully before acting on measurements (im sure you did, though you only showed it for the Y and not the X) As for trading the Y, well on our large Universal head machines we would shim the head to align the spindle but still had to shim jobs to level them to the movement of the Y. As they got older and more worn out (experienced droop) we just got used to setting Z datums locally to where we were working 🤷♂️ i know, not the news you want to hear. Probably best to remove your table and do more inspection, hopefully it won't need scraping.
Thanks. It has been pointed out that it might just be loose gibs on the saddle, or wear on the vertical / horizontal slide. I need to investigate before doing any changes.
Well with a bit of careful cribbing up and judicious levering, can you get the table to come back up to flat and square? If so then give the table gibs some attention first before getting shimmy, besides it might help with rigidity too ;-)
I mean, I know Aussies and Kiwi's are sorta backwards, being from 'Down Under' and all, but that ain't a clock. My grand-pappy taught me what a clock is. "He said son, a clock is something you tell time on." And all the styro balls floating around I am SURE Miss RotarySMP loooooved that package. Rustinox had a video where he fixed a saggy table on his Deckle.
When checking the tram of the table, move the Y back and forth, don't rotate the spindle. You are now including the spindle leaning forward/backward and not just the tram of the table. I made that mistake and ended up making a kind of sawtooth pattern in the Y direction when taking parallel passes over X.
If you upload any videos from NZ, please don't forget to flip them 180 degrees so the those of us remaining in the northern hemisphere can view them properly. Or hold your camera upside down when you shoot.
Roger that Brian. Except you have obviously fallen for the fallacy that the world is a sphere. Don't believe everything you see on the internet. The world is obviously flat. I can see that from here :)
Very nice work on the tramming head Luke. We had bought a Rong-fu mill for the highschool shop years ago but didn't have funding for much tooling so tramming was done with a sad looking home made bar tram. But they shut the shop down and I don't know what happened to the mill but it was a nice little mill with power downfeed. Oh and will be in Athens/Naxos in the beginning of May in the rare chance you might pass through there... Taking my Mom there as she has never been and really wants to go. Lots of planning involved to make it easier for her.
@@RotarySMP That's part of why we do our trips in the off season. Course we can't non rev since it's before the flights start. So looks like Turkish air or BA and the first time in decades I have had to buy a ticket.
@@theinfernalcraftsman It looks like it will be a really busy travel year for the airlines. Non-rev seats are getting harder and harder to get as the AI powered booking systems get better and better at selling ever seat.
@@RotarySMP Flights have been full everywhere here in the US the past 2 years. Almost impossible to non rev anymore. And yeah I take advantage of the fare finders now too. But I'm using those same systems to track seat prices too and sadly getting better at it. I don't know how non rev works for airlines there but for us you look at the loads and see if it's a possibility to get on a flight then list yourself and then hope there are open seats, then it's a mad dash of going through alternate routes to get home... You can have 80 open seats on a flight when you leave the house then when you get to the airport and check again the flight is oversold by 20... It's not fun or easy anymore but I'm giving it a try to head to Florida this weekend...
@@theinfernalcraftsman Back when I worked at Lauda, we got bumped repeatedly for three day in Huala Lumpur, with our 6M old baby. We never fly standby long haul as a family again :)
I would just shim it, where the table bolts to the machine. Since you know the error you can calculate the shims fairly easily and it will get you going for now. In that axis you should really be tramming the spindle relative to the Y TRAVEL first, then once you are sure the spindle is at 90 degrees to Y then tram table to match spindle. 🤔
Before changing anything on your mill, you first need to check whether the table or the spindle axis is tilted. The simple measurement shown in the video cannot differ between those two sources of error on its own. If the error is in the spindel head and you correct the table for it, the geometry will be worse overall.
The first thing that needs to be checked is if your axes are moving in a straight line and if x to y, x to z und y to z are perpendicular. You can check this with a precision granite square. Now you can dial in the table parallel to the x and y axes and use your tramming tool for the spindle. Better way is to set up the table and spindle separately. Dial in the table. For the spindle you use a cylindrical sk40 test bar and dial it in.
Not that I am very familiar with all milling machines, but this deckel-style alignment is very prone to sagging tables IMO. The vertical flat/dovetail way is very far from the table mass, this generates a lot of leverage, the lower side of the vertical(Z-axis?) carriage wears more than the topside=sagging front. I've read somewhere, the top-notch milling machines were made with a smidge of reverse-sag, still in the tolerance, to account for a bit of wear. Even if you scrape the table, you cannot account for the uneven wear on the vertical ways. Placing the leadscrews far from the mass of the table does not help either. On bigger machines, at least non-cnc, the leadscrew is usually right under the table mass. I have a seldom-used manual MH500 too, though the vertical ways are worn a bit even on mine. The flaking is noticeably fainter than on the nonused surface area. Mine has tilting table, so not a real problem, but still.
Did you tighten the bolts of the head before checking tram across Y axis? Also the tram (and table surface) needs to be exactly true to the Y-axis movement, should maybe check for that by sweeping an indicator over the table using the Y-axis before drawing conclusions
Surely you need first to zero each guage on the same spot on the mill table before reading how far out your tram is? Not to do so assumes that both guages, their mountings and their tips are identical, and they wont be.
I mean a way to do it would be to just loosen the table slightly to just put like 2 pices of paper near the bottom bolts and then tighten it back up. The keep redoing that and folding the paper until it's good. Defetnly not the right way to do it but for the work you do it might be good enought, i also don't konw if the table not contacting on the entire surface would cause it to vibrate or anyother weirdnes so do so at your own parrel.
@@RotarySMP it probably is, and i doubt you would want to go spend the money to regrind them. there is a book online for what is generaly torable for theas machines "TESTING MACHINE TOOLS" By DR. GEORG SCHLESINGER if you want to look over the mill section to see what normly lash and wear should be it is free online if you can't find it i can send it to your email
Do check with a indicator on the head the difference between the front of the table and the back. It might be the head that is askew. Might be a chip there for you know. This is all why adjusting the y is a bitch on a universal head. Can't measure with certainty without torquing all the bolts.
maybe calibate the guages first in the same spot to zero using a guage block and then check the two points .this is the instruction from edge tecnology.i am not saying your method is wrong,its just what i followed when using edge tecnology traming kit.
Well, with a tool that makes tramming in the head that easy you've got no excuse for not tilting the head at an angle when needed, right? Also, I'd agree that shimming the lower bolts on the table is probably the simplest fix. The math should be pretty simple to calculate the shim size, no?
Hi, please pardon my ignorance, but does this machine have some sort of clamp on each axis? If so, was the table clamped when tram was measured fore to aft? One more question, does "Luke" have a RU-vid channel? Does he need another place to send some of his stuff? Just kidding. As always, an interesting video. Thanks!
@@RotarySMP it is totally possible, sometimes the filament viscosity can play a roll in the performance. A better formula could provide much better results. Love the videos keep it up!
That is a good point. This machine as dont very little work, but it would be a gib adjustment or way wear issue. What tests would you recommend to determine what the issue is?
should be possible to fab a shim using the machine itself. at least if the worksurface is big enough: get a thin piece of metal like 1mm or sth, surface the whole piece on the machine to be trammed, then use that piece as shim. it should have the perfect angle or am I missing sth?
You can't easily hold a 1mm thin sheet to machine a taper to zero. The cutting tool would just chew it up. I need to see if it is a misadjusted gib first.
@@RotarySMP fair point, cant screw it down as you would need to mill the screws too and using clamps it would just warp. well then lets hope its "just" the gib :)
@@ThisRandomGuyYouDidntNotice To do such a shim, you'd need a vacuum table or large magnetic chuck. I cant remember exactly, but dont think the table mount flange has full contact over the whole surface. I think it is just a strip at top and bottom.
It has been pointed out, that the sag my just be misadjusted gibs. I would not machine off the top. I'd rather scrap in the mount flange if the table is really distorted.
You're not using your tramming tool correctly. Here's how to do it. First, orient both clocks to face forward. You need to see both at once. Then Calibrate it by raising the table until one clock is zeroed at any convenient spot. Next, turn it 180° so that the other clock is touching the same spot (I put a target spot of ink near the front of the table.) Then zero the second clock by turning the bezel, without moving the table. You now have the clocks matched. (It should hold calibration between uses, but it's good practice to check. And never reorient the clocks.) Now align the frame with the X axis and the clocks facing away from the machine, so that you can see them from operator's position. If the head is out of tram you will see different readings. Turn the head until the readings are the same. Do not turn the spindle. Don't even touch the tool. One needle will move cw and the other ccw. Move the head until the readings are the same. They don't need to be zero, just the same. There's the advantage. You can see readings on both sides of the machine without repeatedly swinging a clock left and right, as as you do with a single clock. When used on a Bridgeport style machine it's especially helpful for adjusting the nod.
You could, but that is not a good solution. The table casting is unlikely to have sagged. It is probably wear in the ways or misadjusted gibs. So better to address the problem than the symptom.
Great video as always; making me consider youtubing to motivate me on projects....I'm tramming in my ISEL CPM3020 as we speak using the disassembled mag-indicator base, so funny to start watching this video to see you doing the same haha! I'm having to zero a plate of glass to the x/y motion of the machine, sweep that glass at 4 points and rotate the router head for tram or shim it for nod...THEN recut the bed to be flat in relation to the glass... shes an old girl with no adjustment options, runs in NC code too!