Alignment Question for Machinists - Page 2

AndrewT · 24th January 2012, 05:43 PM

If the ends of travel show near 0mil and you read -3 +5mil in the middle of travel then your direction of travel is not straight. That is likely to be a non flatness of your reference side. Did you check it with a straight edge?
I can see 1mil of out of flatness using a good condition steel straight edge.
The other reason for the wonky travel is a poor XY table. I have no idea about measuring the tolerances of an XY table.

But, if you can get a line of holes straight to within a couple of mil then you will have no problem gets the bolts to line up from the matching machined part.
If you were making a clock mechanism only 2000mil by 2000mil, I would expect you to work to tighter tolerances.

Lavcat · 30th January 2012, 02:31 AM

There is no precision surface on the side of the table to indicate on, which may explain the numbers, but now I have mounted and squared the vise. Using a laser (and this is the first time I have tried using a laser for alignment) I got within 5 mils. Then using a dial gauge I got it within 5 tenths, which is about as good as I can measure.

My setup was to put a large parallel in the vise and indicate along the vertical surface of the parallel. Do folks think this is a valid method?

24th January 2012, 05:43 PM	#11
AndrewT diyAudio Member Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Scottish Borders	If the ends of travel show near 0mil and you read -3 +5mil in the middle of travel then your direction of travel is not straight. That is likely to be a non flatness of your reference side. Did you check it with a straight edge? I can see 1mil of out of flatness using a good condition steel straight edge. The other reason for the wonky travel is a poor XY table. I have no idea about measuring the tolerances of an XY table. But, if you can get a line of holes straight to within a couple of mil then you will have no problem gets the bolts to line up from the matching machined part. If you were making a clock mechanism only 2000mil by 2000mil, I would expect you to work to tighter tolerances. __________________ regards Andrew T.

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30th January 2012, 02:31 AM	#12
Lavcat diyAudio Member Join Date: Dec 2009 Location: New Jersey USA	There is no precision surface on the side of the table to indicate on, which may explain the numbers, but now I have mounted and squared the vise. Using a laser (and this is the first time I have tried using a laser for alignment) I got within 5 mils. Then using a dial gauge I got it within 5 tenths, which is about as good as I can measure. My setup was to put a large parallel in the vise and indicate along the vertical surface of the parallel. Do folks think this is a valid method?

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