Spoil board ridges on one side - Is it twist?

Machines (Elite W/ Masso)
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New Elite Foreman owner here, just got my machine up and running. During setup, I used a laser level and did my best to ensure the table top was flat with no twist. I’m sure it’s not perfect, but it’s pretty close.

First pass at surfacing my spoil board with a 2.5” carbide flattening bit, with the cutter moving along the X axis only (not in a square around the perimeter of the machine), I’m finding that the left side of the spoilboard is perfect, but the right side shows small ridges that suggest some forward “nod” in the Z axis.

With the difference being from one side to the other rather than across the entire X axis, should I assume there’s some twist going on? Or should I make adjustments on the micro tramming screws on one side only and call it good?

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Have you tried the fishing line test to check for twist? Search the forum for “fishing line”, there’s lots of comments.

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Since the ridges were consistent along the right side from front to rear, I concluded that it couldn’t be twist - otherwise there would be some difference in the ridges between the extreme ends.

So I set about adjusting the right side only and ended up having to shim the front side of the X mounting blocks by 0.020”

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  • which seems like an awful lot, but the results after another flattening pass showed it to be absolutely perfect on all 4 corners of the machine.
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I’m glad you got it flat, but you’re right-.020 is a pretty giant compensation. I’d still do the test

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I went ahead and did the fishing string test and found that the back left corner was low, so I shimmed between the base and riser by 0.035” and got the strings close enough that I can tell if they touch or not.

Removed the shims I had on the X mounting block and running another surfacing job now. I can just barely feel ridges at the far right of the spoil board, but nothing compared to when I started. I’ll check with a tramming jig later and decide if I need to mess with it anymore.

Thanks for the repeated suggestion of running the fishing line test - it was definitely something I should have done earlier.

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One final update: I still ended up having to shim on the right side by 0.025” and also had to shim on the left be 0.010”.

But there’s no twist and no lines in the spoil board.

Maybe one of these days I’ll try to figure out why I should need to shim at all - for now, I’m just going to use the machine.

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