Hi all,
Proud new owner of the Rotary 4th Axis. While setting it up, I noticed that the tailstock is not perfectly aligned with the rotary. See these pictures:
I don’t see a way to adjust alignment - am I missing anything?
It’s not the jaws that are misaligned—I can rotate the headstock, and all four jaws hit the live center in exactly the same spot.
I have the same issue, on the underside of the rotary there are 4 screws, on the tail & headstock, I loosened mine enough to wiggle them a bit, getting it slightly more aligned but its still not perfect, not sure what else to do.
no offence at all, I have reseated my jaws multiple times, everything seems good that way. I agree this one is a bit of a tough pill to swallow, being delayed multiple times, the BB firmware not working correctly forcing manual probing, motor setting not applying, and the post processors not working right either. I guess some of it comes with being an early adopter but its been a struggle
Its not a jaws issue, I can rotate the headstock and see all 4 jaws show the same results. Each 90 degree turn looks exactly the same. If a jaw was off, I would get different distances for different jaws.
I guess I will have to try and wiggle things around - but I expected better quality control and precision.
I contacted support about how to re-align the tailstock, and some pictures of it not lining up. They got back to me over the weekend (amazing support) looks like they are going to replace entire rotary unit, they think the rails might be warped.
Is this going to be a common problem?
I would tend to agree. I do not have mine yet, but it looks as if there is no adjustment possible. That is a design error. Every machinist lathe tailstock has adjustment included. Onefinity is a young company, and this is indicative of growing pains. I hope they get their collective S**T together soon, because it is also the kind of thing that can strangle a young company in the crib. It is bad enough to make customers wait an inordinate amount of time for the product but then to receive a defective one is worse still.
I received my rotary today and checked the alignment between chuck and tailstock because of this post. I tried to measure as best possible holding a ruler and phone to get the pictures. It does seem like my tailstock is offset to the front side. The chuck is very close to being centered. I have not checked to see if I have any wiggle room by loosening up the mounting bolts to get the chuck and tailstock aligned closer.
Adjustment of 4th Axis Rotary
(BB Version Woodworker)
After reading a post about alignment, sure enough mine was slightly off, but correctable.
In my particular case: (using a V bit in the chuck match up with the live center point)
Sideway adjustment….loosened the four bolts under the Chuck Head, and loosened the four bolts under the Live Center. The Chuck Head required slight movement clockwise, the Live Center slight counter clockwise, to perfectly align.
Up and Down adjustment….The Live Center was slightly lower. Using feeler gauge, I estimated a shim would be around .8mm to .9mm (some of you would be better at measuring). Regardless, what worked for me are four layers of index card paper!
Spanning between two tables made setting bolts easy.
If many units are like this, perhaps all it takes is a shim.
Kind of a shame to have fix these really nice rotary axis especially at the price .
Pat
I finally got back to seeing if I could get the tailstock and chuck aligned on my rotary. Unfortunately I could not get much improvement by loosening the bolts and trying to rotate both the chuck and tailstock. The stepped and tapered interface locks them down fairly tight. Mine is also off vertically which I can correct with shims. I have emailed 1F support asking for a solution to this alignment issue.
I heard back from Support yesterday and this morning. They provided an alignment procedure, which helped some but I was still off horizontally and no change with vertical alignment. I added a .015 shim under the tailstock and went through the alignment procedure again. I am satisfied with the results.
I found I had exactly the same problem as pictured here in the top picture. It turned out I had installed the jaws improperly. Each jaw has a number 1,2,3,or 4 stamped on it although it may be hard to see. In the chuck opening there are numbers stamped from one to four counter clockwise as you look into the chuck. The number one jaw must go into the number one opening in the chuck, and so on. Hope this solves some ones problem. If you go one youtube and search for installing jaws in chuck you will find that machinists know all about this.
Yes, why do you ask.
ok just got the revolution installed and the alignment was spot on. Just sayin.
