I have screwed down my journeyman X50 four times so far and I cannot get both rails to home together at thier respective foot. One rail always has a gap of about 3/8 inch when the other side “ hits home”. Facing the machine, when the gantry rail comes forward, it will touch on the right side ( at X axis foot before the left side touches, leaving about a 3/8 gap between the left rail and foot.
I am new to CNC but I did watch the online video and how to square up the machine and it doesn’t seem to help. I hope I have explained that well.
I’m sure someone has run up against this before and perhaps you could tell me the fix.
Or if anyone is in my area and would like to stop by you are more than welcome. I am within an hour of the Geneva, Waterloo, ithaca, watkins Glen area of New York. Thanks gang.
Hey Ross,
did you first check your machine for rectangularity, like → described here.
After you ensured that both diagonals are perfectly equal, then you can do the following:
- Shut down the CNC controller.
- Disconnect both Y stepper motors from the controller.
- Loosen slightly the four bolts on the top of every Y carriage that attach the X rail to them.
- Move both Y carriages towards front until they both touch the front end.
- Retighten the eight bolts.
- Restart the controller.
Which controller do you have, Buildbotics-derived Onefinity Original Series, or Elite Masso G3 Touch?
My controller is the touch black box that OneFinity sent with the unit, as well as the Nintendo looking remote.
From what I understand the Masso controller only comes with the elite series? and my machine is not the elite, but the journeyman X 50.
Thankyou,
Ross. 
I have the same issue with my X50 the machine is square, but i think my problem is that one side is longer than the other at least that’s what the tape measure shows.
Hey Joseph,
do you mean the distance between the black anodized aluminium extrusion blocks is different on left Y rail than on right Y rail? Then of course comparing the diagonals of the rails themselves makes no sense, since you have neither a parallelogram nor a rectangle then. But the good thing is, if you use a bar gauge like in the method described here, you can use this bar gauge to compare the length of both Y rails first.
If you have different lengths, you could adjust one length to the other by loosening the grub screws on one black anodized extrusion block on one side, and slide the block on the chrome-plated hollow shafts until the distance of the blocks is the same as on the other side (use the bar gauge to check). But the nut a the end of the ball screw will have to be loosened and adjusted too if you move the block! This is described in this support document under point 7) (“End nut adjustment”).
Another method to make the machine square in this case, but without sliding one of these blocks on the hollow shafts, would be to mill a rectangle into the wasteboard, along the outmost edges of the workarea, with the tip of a V-bit with a minimal depth, and then measure the diagonals on this rectangle (e.g. with the bar gauge too).
To “square” the machine then, you loosen the bolts of two opposite Y feet (let’s say, the front feet) and then slightly shift the feet to left or right (with the X axis in the frontmost position), and then retighten the bolts, and repeat everything until the rectangle you mill into the wasteboard has equal diagonals. If you repeat this on the same wasteboard over and over again, and want to avoid to mill into the grooves made earlier, you could create a simple rectangle as a g-code program and make it slightly smaller every turn so you don’t get into the grooves made earlier.
Hi JoeA, thanks for taking the time to reply. I will check a few things after reading your helpful post. Best regards, Ross.
Or I could just leave it as is for it works find!
Joe Adams
| Aiph5u User
July 6 |
- | - |
Hey Joseph,
JoeA:
I have the same issue with my X50 the machine is square, but i think my problem is that one side is longer than the other at least that’s what the tape measure shows.
do you mean the distance between the black anodized aluminium extrusion blocks is different on left Y rail than on right Y rail? Then of course comparing the diagonals of the rails themselves makes no sense, since you have neither a parallelogram nor a rectangle then. But the good thing is, if you use a bar gauge like in the method described here, you can use this bar gauge to compare the length of both Y rails first.
If you have different lengths, you could adjust one length to the other by loosening the grub screws on one black anodized extrusion block on one side, and slide the block on the chrome-plated hollow shafts until the distance of the blocks is the same as on the other side (use the bar gauge to check). But the nut a the end of the ball screw will have to be loosened and adjusted too if you move the block! This is described in this support document under point 7) (“End nut adjustment”).
Another method to make the machine square in this case, but without sliding one of these blocks on the hollow shafts, would be to mill a rectangle into the wasteboard, along the outmost edges of the workarea, with the tip of a V-bit with a minimal depth, and then measure the diagonals on this rectangle (e.g. with the bar gauge too).
To “square” the machine then, you loosen the bolts of two opposite Y feet (let’s say, the front feet) and then slightly shift the feet to left or right (with the X axis in the frontmost position), and then retighten the bolts, and repeat everything until the rectangle you mill into the wasteboard has equal diagonals. If you repeat this on the same wasteboard over and over again, and want to avoid to mill into the grooves made earlier, you could create a simple rectangle as a g-code program and make it slightly smaller every turn so you don’t get into the grooves made earlier.
Take the ball screw of the side that doesn’t touch the foot and manually turn it until it meets the foot like the other side. It will have a little resistance but it will turn by hand.
Hello, and thanks for your suggestion. I think I have resolved the issue. What I actually did, was while facing the machine, I put one front screw in the front foot, and one rear in the rear foot, in the rail on the right. Then I slowly jogged the X rail from back to front with the left rail unsecured to the table. after hand sliding the left rail forward and backward ( about 1/8 inch at a time ) a couple of times while checking it this way it seem to put the rail exactly where it needed to be to line up even with the other one. At that point, I put one screw each to secure left rail facing. I repeated the X rail front to back to front test again. Everything came out square and I finished screwing down the feet. I can’t say it would work in every situation, but it seem to do the trick for me. My next challenge is figuring out the Z probe being a newbie. It’s one step at a time and from what I understand every time I use the machine it’s a two home process? I home the machine and then I home my material? Or will the machine itself stay homed so that I actually only have to home XYZ on my material? My creation thus far has been a squiggly line jogged through a piece of scrap wood, but I am calling it progress. 
Hey Ross,
I think you should in any case finally check the machine for rectangularity by milling something. If you program a simple rectangle as a toolpath, nearly as big as the workarea, and mill it with the tip of a V-bit, you can then check if the machine produces right angles or not, by comparing the diagonals of the grooves you milled, e.g. with a bar gauge.
See Homing vs. Zeroing.
Homing is done once after startup of the machine. It allows the machine to be sure where its carriages are by first driving them home once.
Zeroing XYZ means telling the machine where the workpiece zero coordinate of your 3D model is to be found on the real workpiece. It allows the g-code toolpath which you created with your CAM software to start at the correct position on the workpiece.
Zeroing Z alone has to be repeated everytime that you changed a bit, since bits have different lenghts and the machine needs you zeroing the new bit to ensure it will start to mill at the right height on the workpiece.
Here the manufacturers support videos:
Hi🙂will definitely do. Thanks.