Journeyman 50" not squared

[Gigglybert]

Hi,

I upgraded to the journeyman 50" x rail and i updated the 0 motors using the settings they provided.

changes:

travel per rev 10 to 16mm
soft limits max 1219mm

am i missing something because every time I check for square, it is always off. Please advise. Thanks!

[Oldockman]

The anomaly here is the Y rails had to be spread apart to accept the wider X rail. When I setup my Woodworker X-50, as accurately as possible via tape measure, the feet of both Y rails X’ed perfectly square. When I installed the X rail and let it settle in to the grooves tightened down. However, it took multiple times of pushing front to back, back to front, loosening all the X bolts and re-tightening, before I got consistent square results. My take is the machined grooves don’t guarantee 100% square results combined with the slop in the mounting holes. After being satisfied with the final assembly, via the game pad, after homing, I scribed a perimeter line into the table with a 60 degree Vbit the size of the wasteboard. This accomplished 2 things, 1 a way to align the wasteboard to the machine/table, 2 another opportunity to check for square via the X method with a tape measure. I only work with wood and the properties of the wood, will change during a carve. Whether it stays perfectly flat, twists, warps. In my world, square is a must but sweating .005” of other alignment issues doesn’t matter working with wood, when the properties of it constantly change during a carve. Hope this helps, can be more detailed about the setup process and/or more details about the multiple fine tunings to get the machine consistent.

[Aiph5u (Aiph5u (not affiliated with Onefinity))]

Hey Gigglybert,

you machine is square when the diagonals are equal. I would use a bar gauge to check this, as mentioned in the “squaring” topics below:

@Aiph5u

The manufacturer’s assembly instructions do not include a safe method to ensure the rectangularity of the machine. Many users have already noticed that after assembling, their machine was not “square”. Your machine could be a parallelogram instead of a rectangle. This can be checked with a tool like this.

Adjusting this would usually require to unscrew the rear or the front feet of the machine and repositioning them a little more to the left or to the right.

You can also avoid problems with rectangularity prior to assembling by finding and marking the correct locations for the holes for the feet of the machine by using one of the geometrical methods described in the thread above.

@Aiph5u

For the machine to be rectangular (“squared”), the diagonals have to be equal, you can ensure this with a tool like this. Note that the length of the Y rails on left and right have to be equal too!

@Aiph5u

Using Starrett things is always a joy, but you can also use the simpler Bar Gauge Heads that I recommend with wooden sticks with sharpened edge, like in the images shown in this item description at Lee Valley website :

Also as Tom mentioned here, the distance between the two blocks on one side can be different on left and right side. And the equal-diagonals method only works in a rectangle, not in a trapezoid, so first measurement should be whether y=y’! The good thing is, this can also be done with the same Bar Gauge method!

Note that after successful “squaring” of the machine by loosening, repositioning and tightening two feet of the machine, you’ll have to move both left and right Y sliders manually towards front until they each touch their front end, with the Onefinity Controller powered off (=important, because the stepper idle current would prevent this if Controller was on). You should previously have loosened the eight bolts that hold the X axis down while you do this, and retighten them after you reached the front end position with the two Y sliders.

Further Reading

This is this forum’s official squaring the machine thread:

• Is your router frame a parallelogram? Mine was!

[Gigglybert]

Hey aiph5u!!!

Thank you for this tip! Sorry for the late reply but when I finally got around to doing what you recommended, my projects were dead square! I had originally assumed that just by moving the x axis from front to back would automatically square the cnc but I was wrong.

I ended up measuring diagonally and noticed that I was off by 3/4 of an inch. When I got it to about 1/8 in difference I thought that would be good enough and the results were night and day. Thank you very much for you help!!!