[Windscreen]

It is obviously a very subjective question, and I'll hear opinions ranging from perfect to don't expect better than 0.001 in/in. I've done some searching and haven't seen much discussion on what is square enough on an RF45 clone (Optimum BF-46 in my case). I'm a perfectionist, and would probably be shimming until I croak to get under 0.0001 in/in.

Here's where I'm at: Just sitting free on the stand, the mill was about perfect in X-Z, but was out about 0.0007 inch per inch of Z in Y-Z. I'd like to see that closer to 1 tenth per inch of Z, but I'm not sure if that is realistic or not on this class of machine. After 6 hours of fiddling, I got Y-Z down to 2 tenths per inch, but then X-Z gained some and is sitting at 3 tenths per inch. I should probably be satisfied with that, but I still feel the need to try to make it better. What does everyone else think? Am I trying to make it unreasonably good?

Just for grins, I put the cylindrical square on an older Trak DPM at work in our model shop. On that machine I measured 1 tenth per inch in X-Z, and 2 tenths per inch in Y-Z. I'm not sure if I learned anything from that.

Thanks,
-Steve

[carlowens]

lol, i think the only thing that will help is a trip to a psychiatrist, you are fighting a battle with no end in sight. learn to accept that good enough is good enough. wasting 6 hours for a couple 10ths that if you checked tomorrow and the temperature has changed it could be off farther the other way. call .001 great and move on.

[dracozny]

ten thousandths, I wish! My zx45 is off by .01"/inch just over .5 degrees. After talking to a professional Machinist I'm machining out a shim plate using a fly cutter, flipping it over and bolting it under the column. job done.

[Windscreen]

10 thou per inch?! That would flat out piss me off. I hope you get her straightened out.

I think I'll just leave my machine alone for now, then, and see how stable it stays after making some chips with it. Making adapters to mount glass scales and reader heads should be a good first task, and put a little load on the machine. I'll check the repeatability of the squareness measurements afterwards.

-Steve