Hey everyone. I’m going to explain this further here, since it’s a VERY common comment that I’m distorting the part with the vise. That is not the case, but perhaps that section of the video isn’t sufficiently clear. This is 3/8” wall extrusion and I’m clamping it lightly for these tests. It is NOT distorting the part. Near the end I check for that by putting the DTI on the top, above the wall of the extrusion. It moves 15 thou. That’s a huge amount, and not in the middle where distortion would show. The part is moving, not distorting. It is ROLLING upwards on the round bar, which is why removing that eliminates the problem. I hope that clears it up.
Blondihacks - thanks for the clarification. I too had come away with the idea this was distortion of the part. (Also, this comment isn’t pinned so it’s headed down the feed...)
It was moving up because the wall against the fixed jaw bends as far as I can tell, when the pin is removed the force is taken by the wall against the vise base so it doesn't bend so much. Otherwise the same would happen with solid block, and that doesn't happen with solid block
Great video. How are the ways on the vise? I wonder if the round bar causes a rolling action on the movable jaw, which then lifts that jaw. The effect would roll the part towards the column. An indicator on the top of the movable jaw should give some insight. Just a thought.
@@clawtlr the movable jaw doesn't lift on this style vises because there is a wedge system pulling it down. If it appears to be moving, the whole vise is just bending to a banana shape as well or it is not adjusted correctly, or both
Quinn - what a great video. You have a special knack for concisely explaining nuanced technical information, while moving at a good pace, and keeping it fun!
That was extremely interesting. Didn't see it coming. Well done for the methodical approach to fault finding that issue. That is another of your videos that I will be using as reference material in the future.
I so much appreciate when you admit a mistake and talk through it, like having to tram a second time. Many others would be creative in post and wouldn't share details, acting like they did it perfect the first time. A very conclusive video in a couple aspects!
I can honestly say you are the very best with explaining things and with what you say. Countless videos ive watched after having a problem with some machining issue and still had the problem. Everyone on youtube seems to make the same videos or at least the same basic information given in their videos. But YOU QUINN always seem to answer my question. So just wanted to say thank you for all the hardwork you do with these videos. I know alot of work goes into them. You do a great job! Except for your intro with ur fingers waving around. Not a fan of that but you sure know how to teach and you’re extremely knowledgeable.
This might be one of my favorite episodes, some excellent detective work there for a head scratcher I'm sure most of us will eventually come across. Thanks as always !!
I'm home from work, watching another of your great videos, home because I sprained a foot. Now I have to worry about tramming, nod, lean, and in my case, saggy knee! -I have an old Rockwell. You ARE a gifted teacher! Thank you for all your efforts, and Merry Christmas!
With the 2" cutter... loosen the bolts bring the tool to touch the bed or ground flat stock. Slowly tighten all the bolts. I promise it works. The simplest way. I do it almost every week after tilting the turret on a Bridgeport. Excellent video.
I am not a machinist. I do not have a mill or a metal lathe. I do have a small hobby cnc and a wood lathe. I really enjoy your problem solving technique. You have spent alot of time explaining the nomenclature and your reasoning with words and diagrams. Thank you so much.
Thanks! Best video I have seen yet on problems of squareness on the mill. Especially good since I have the same mill. In the past I had always worked with Bridgeport type mills which have the capability to adjust for nod and when we trammed ahead we indicated from front to back as well as left to right. As a side note, for whatever reason, during my 20 plus years in several different shops I had never heard of "tramming the head". We always "swept the table" or "squared the head" but I was working for the last half of my career in IT so upon returning as a hobbyist I now hear "tramming" as the most common term.
First off, thanks a lot for the great videos. I've not done any machining for nearly 40 years, but I took a lot of classes in high school and college, and was also a "helper" in those classes since I seemed to have a knack for it. I did a similar thing on 10 pieces of 6-in square tube steel for the shop teacher. What he had me do first was to make a precision angle plate that I could clamp the vertical side of the tube to, and then the bottom of the tube was clamped to the table. It worked out quite well and the surfaces ended up being within a few ten thousands when I was done as long as I didn't try to hog off too much on a pass. It was a fun experience. Have no idea what those were ultimately used for, and the shop teacher didn't know either. Just given a rough hand-draw on a sheet of oily paper. :) Of course, Aluminum is a whole different game. I did little machining of it in my time.
Quinn, I just sold a PM932M-PDF I owned for 2 years and it was my first mill. It took me months to figure out how to get that machine running true. This video would have saved me a lot of time and headaches back then! I actually removed the column and head to check the surfaces between the column and base of the mill. What I found was that those surfaces were poorly machined, not even ground. I had to shim my column and that fixed the problem. It is very touch and go. I also found that tramming to the vise was more accurate than tramming to the table. At least that’s what my parts showed. Great video!
Well, that was fun. Probably not for you but for us. It doesn't take much to crush small cross sections with the mechanical advantage of a vice. When you are working to thousandths, everything makes a difference. Tracking down this sort of problem is like looking for a needle in a haystack and first you must find the correct haystack. Well done.
Nice presentation and diagrams. Trammed my bench-top mill the other day for a similar problem while using a fly cutter. Noticed there was still some cutting on the back side. Never thought about locking the head down during adjustment. You gave some good pointers. Thanks.
Another wonderful presentation. I like how you work the problems that are typically seen in the hobby shop. This is a new hobby for me and I began with your lathe videos and I recently purchased a mill much like yours, a pm-25mv. My son warned me about some of the peculiarities of vises and suggested that I go with a kurt vise to minimize that. Of course I didn’t listen and selected a less expensive one offered by precision matthews. The knowledge that you shared with us today might keep those Benjamin’s in my billfold instead of Kurt’s. Thanks for everything and keep up the good work.
Shim stock is useful in so many applications. Thank you, Quinn, for reminding me how useful it is. Been many years since I have needed it. When I needed it, throughout the years, it wasn't there. Really. I'm a "grunt". PHD in GED. No respect, no matter what I fix. :-)
Love your channel, I hate it when my Cutter gets catty Wompus, but doesn’t everyone, thankful there’s a woman’s presence in the machining world, wish there were more. Grace and Peace!
If you wanted to get really crazy with it you could use machine epoxy to influence the column or scrape the bottom of the column and top of the base where the column sits. Stefan has a great video on this epoxy method. I am all too familiar with the very issues you speak of in this video. It can be time consuming to correct but it’s well worth it. That’s the only way to get great results on these mills i think. It’s all gotta be working together in unison. And the issue with it not holding an adjustment, I ran into that too!! Drove me crazy
Thanks for an excellent video. I read that the definition of a machine tool is one that has the accuracy built into the machine. You can make a cylinder with a file and a vise if you can measure the shape and correct the errors. free form like scraping. Or spin it in a lathe and get roundness, straightness, perpendicularity, cylindricity, size from the machine. We build machine tools and have to check for the errors you pointed out. When one refers to a vertical direction which machine element is it? Axis of the spindle, quill motion, column Z, 90 degrees to bed Y, 90 degrees to the table top, vise jaw, etc. The problem could be complicated if the wrong thing was adjusted. If a head nod was "corrected" by column lean the tram and fly cut would look good but bores would be out of square. Good job bringing these concepts up in an interesting and informative way.
Best tram video on RUclips ! Of course you could also spend untold time scraping everything. The art of scraping Brutal .... Blondyhacks excellence in action.
Interesting Video.... Lot of information shared here. BTW thanks for sharing it. I guess what i took away from this is.... Don't start shimming the machine, before you check ALL other possible variables. A real learning experience for both of us....! Keep up the good work!!
A very high value lesson in sleuthing machining errors was just given. Worth three x the time invested at the least. Looking at the part in the vise the wire may have been deforming the wall of the stock inwards therefore shortening that leg of the tube lowering that side of the top that was being milled. Machining the end first and clamping across the length may have helped the issue, But Hindsight is always 20/20. Mahalo
Hi Quin.. this video wan very very helpful about troubleshooting squareness of the mill... Thanks you very much you share all this inforamtion with us.
Waterslides! Mole Hills! Trams! Your workshop sounds like a delightful place to visit! Isn't it interesting what other engineers call different things? We would rectify this problem by 'clocking' the head true or flat.
This was amazing! I actually enjoyed the ride of you debugging this! Albeit a novice, I imagined myself an EXPERT at some tradeshow watching the video and trying to second-guess and predict what is going on. You should almost put fixed pauses in the video like this, with a prompt -- "#3, WHAT DO YOU THINK is GOING ON, NOW? (write it down, no cheating!)" I'm certain that kind of interaction would go over big at a TRADESHOW! Perhaps even making it interactive for those commenting to your thread! IDK.
You can check for head nod after you've trammed the column by mounting an indicator on the table and looking for any deviation of the spindle as you raise and lower the head. I recall watching one video where the poor fellow was sure he could tram his machine simply by milling the table. I cringed all the way through it. He was adamant that he was right even after I explain how an out of tram column would leave scalloped grooves in his parts.
Everything in this video was usefull. I had a similar journey on my import mill vise. I discovered a .007 in high ridge on my vise's fixed jaw casting (must have been some cutter they used) which caused the vice jaw to tip at an angle when I installed it. Then I discovered the base of the vise was warped. I was seeing movement on my vise jaw when I tightened the vise to my mill table. I had a fly cutter that let me flatten the base which uncovered a tram issue when it ended up cutting on the back side just like yours. It seemed like you enjoyed troubleshooting your problems. I did mine too. Thanks for the video.
Great video . When I machine , I hold the work piece with 1/8" dowel pins . Also the side pin I hold it in the center of the jaw . I noticed it was held more to the top of the front jaw, and high parallel underneath. I'm a tool maker for 35 years . I must say it was great video .
Wow, that was some kind of detective work. It's like you know stuff, and stuff! I had to watch a couple of times to get it, but finally... Good job! Thanks, and Meow to Sprocket.
Now that was an emotional waterslide ride as Quinn fixes, fails, fixes, fails, and fixes to ultimately find success by applying the KISS rule with this type of stock. Issue resolution was an om moment. I confess that my eyes crossed more than once as my appreciation grew for what seemed to be a futile battle with the evils of nodding, leaning, kneeling, and tilting. May you always be my teacher. :)
One of the First Things i did when I got my mill year's ago was I made a DIY tramming device which comes in the spindle and has two indicators 25 cm away from each other so I just have to have the same reading on each side and I'm 💯 okay ...fast and easy ....you can buy the same thing but if you build it properly there's no need it is precise as can be ....I don't say again that Quinn's videos are so good and informative it's getting boring to repeat myself every time 🤪
HI Quinn, great video and some great sleuthin'! I know its an odd mix or relief and frustration when you discover the machine was fine all along.....(I once was pulling my hair out blaming my machine, trying to figure it out, but it was the probe on the Heimer being loose that was causing all the problems). I have found every time I face thin stock with the fly cutter if it has ANY opportunity to flex under the cutting load that I get that high spot in the middle. A second spring pass will usually reveal this as the cutter will make contact with that high spot and leave the edges alone.
When your part design cooperates, sure. What do you do when your part is a foot long? Mayne you live in a better world, but my Kurt and Parlec vises only hold 9 inches tops.
@@railgap when you have to clamp on the colapsable wall of an extruction what you do, if posible, is to brace the structure internally with whatever may work. even machinist jack screws could save you some pain killers.
hey thanks! this was all very usefull. i suspected the vice clamp force being the cause since the very begining.. which makes me feel more confident for whenever i get to mount my shop. and all these geometries, while vivid in my head, are some much more easier to undesrtand by observing the effects they have on the cuts. amazing content
Regarding shimming the column, Stefan Gotteswinter has a great video where he shims it with annealed copper and fills the gap with a metal-filled epoxy material. Interesting video as always!
@@jdstar6352 Most (emphasizing MOST) epoxies break down at around 400° F and can be scraped away with a soft gasket scraper or similar tool. There are some heat resistant epoxies so don't use them here. Caution is required because the finish of the machinery probably has a Bondo type filler under the paint and that and the paint could both be easily damaged. A soldering iron is a good way to apply pinpoint heat that doesn't spread to other areas easily. It will break down the epoxy while barely transferring any heat to the metal substrate. I've been doing this on RC airplanes without damaging the wood since college and I'm now retirement age.
We make "crush plugs" for that kind of stuff, to distribute clamp force/support the part between the jaws. Or sometimes if we have to hold a .001" or less flatness we put an indicator on the part while clamping to see how much clamping we need.
I've found my fair share of tram issues with flycutters. Most of the mills at my school hadn't been trammed since they arrived there, so when I had a back cut that looked like .010"-.015", I got a little suspicious. I ended up tramming most of the mills there. Good for practice, I suppose.
Sounds like it's time for FEA! Looking at the side view of your setup, all the clamping force is through the rod some distance above the floor of the part. This will deflect the floor and the ceiling up on the rod side and tilt the top of the walls aft. The back jaw will resist this somewhat the back wall will deflect above the vise. If you move the rod to close to the middle of the floor I suspect the deflection will be greatly reduced. Fusion 360 has FEA capabilities and it might be fun to see if you can approximate the results in sims. Wait, this is a machining channel!
Thank you for a most interesting, informative and thought-provoking explanation of how to identify the root causes of issues of machine geometry. My round pillar mill drill is keeping me well challenged in this regard but I now feel a little more confident in revisiting the analysis of its waywardness and might even be able to reduce the more severe of them.
Oh no, it’s Devo. I went through all of this with my first mill which was a mill-drill, otherwise known as a glorified drill press. I was trying to shim the column in two planes at the same time. It was a long, frustrating process that resulted in some improvement. The best part of it was an opportunity to practice logical thinking and patience.
Thanks for this and all your other great videos. In my apprenticeship here in Denmark i was taugth that you should have a small tilt in your mill, as when you move forward the tool will cut with a nice surface, and not having any marks left by the end of the tool. of course the tilt should be very small. I would also take care to always go the same way so that your grooves align and you do not cut with the movement but against it. But thats for manual milling. A CNC mill should be 100 % aliogned as it compensates for the loosenes of the machinery.
Had exactly the same issue on my PM-728vt with a superfly. Followed pretty much the same steps. resolution, stop using wire on the movable jaw side. Tried both copper and aluminum wire. Thank you, great video.
Ah, the joys of dealing with tram issues in knee Mills😵. This is why they sell kits to put indicators on Bridgeport heads to monitor squareness. I'm so glad I don't have to deal with that anymore. Quinn, you're rod method is good, it's just the placement of it was too high, causing the inner wall to buckle distorting the rest of the extrusion. Next time, try to place it where it won't cause collapse👍
My first instinct was definitely that something was amiss about the work holding of the extrusion itself. I've machined enough extrusions to know they never play by the traditional rules. Looks like your machine is running truer and better than ever at any case. I need to go through your level of rigor on my own little mill for similar reasons, definitely has come slightly off tram over the last year or so.
Very interesting. In the 1970’s I worked as a machinist in a shop that milled a lot of sand cast aluminum. Fly cutters with cemented carbide tools were the norm. Tolerances were in the .005” range. Things worked well. In the 1980’s I worked as a detailed parts inspector at a place that made parts for Boeing. If you had a whole .001” tolerance you were in high clover. If you know geometric tolerances you will understand that the .001” was in parallel and square as well. This shop NEVER used fly cutters. The flat milling was multiple passes with .500 diameter cutter. This was done specifically to negate any tram ( any direction) effects. Thought you may find this interesting.
Hi BH. Magic words. Stefan Gotteswinter. He did an realignment of his mill column using a made for purpose metal epoxy to, needless to say, improve the rigidity. It’s a hairy operation though. Need to get the alignment sorted before the epoxy goes off. An enhancement to his approach would be to install some adjustment grub screws to help set the alignment, but that would make it an EVEN bigger job ... BobUK.
Turn it 90 degrees on the vertical and repeat and see if the results are different. Limited to the jaw distance of the work piece, but for checking alignment may help.
Save. Buy the right house/garage. Make it a priority. You don't have to be rich, just want it badly enough for long enough that you fold it into your life's planning. I picked up a used Bridgeport for $1400 from a friendly machine shop, and paid only $200 to get it moved across town and into my shop by professional riggers. (but I'm still buying tooling ten years later, LOL - you can spend more than the cost of the machine on tooling)
Enjoyed that 👍 my 32l mill managed to have a collum way more than 5 thou out, on top of 6 thou nod in the head. I used gotteswinter video to epoxy the collum which worked well, shimmed the head, but one day I'll bite the bullet and grind/scrape it. Think it would be worth it to get the rigidity back.
Great job, Quinn!!! Rolling on the bar ... Hmmm..... Something I actually wondered about when watching other machinists doing setups. How do you avoid the lean from pressures of the milling... Larger rounds? more rounds? Glad you're there.
Sometimes it seems like when I have problems like that I wind up chasing my tail , when all I had to do was sit down and not think about it for a few minutes, anyway thanks for the insight, hope you and yours stay safe. Thanks
Thank you so much for this video. My mill is even smaller, less adjustable and more flexy than yours, but I think you gave me some food for thought that I can use to address it. If only I had a bigger mill,,, and a bigger shop to put it in :)
Shimming is my only saving grace with my round column Pro Cut. The last time I ran the tramming process I used aluminum for shim. I will replace that with steel. Thank you.
3:19 I read this in his voice. I also responded with “You’re absolutely right!” Love your sense of humor. You’re up there with This Old Tony in my book. Keep it up. Doing great!
eh, shim happens..... PS did you see Stefan Gotteswinters video on shimming his mill with epoxy? Advantage, because it covers such a huge area and a fluid levels itself.
Instead of adding pieces of shim stock around the various bolting points, you can use a small mill and the error in the machine to machine a wedge that corrects the nod or tram problem while making full contact and preserving rigidity. Since you are using the machine's own error to create the wedge, you don't even have to measure the error to get the correct wedge. When I did this, I double-stick taped my wedge stock (1/8" 5051 because I had some) to 3/4" thick piece of plate glass. The wedge and glass were clamped down to the table, and shimmed until tramming indicated it was square to the spindle. Glass has pretty decent strength in compression as long as you spread the load with something softish (cardboard from a beer 6 pack is what I used) and a block of steel to spread the force from the nose of the clamp. In my case I was fixing a round-column mill drill, so shimming the base to column joint was really the only option. On a mill-drill the quill is the only useful Z-travel, so you don't really worry about if the column is perpendicular to the X and Y travel. If anyone tries this, note that the wedge machining orientation has to be correct so that it fixes the error instead of doubling it. In my case, the wedge had to be flipped over diagonally between machining and installation. In my case the wedge was square with a square bolt pattern, so no chance of machining it wrong, but if the shape of the wedge is irregular, you will have to think it through carefully.
I like to inspect gib adjustment with dial indicator & a tug when I tram the head, since the indicators are out and area is clean and clear, takes but a minute. 2 minutes if adjustment is needed. Keeps my machine's movement "honest" and the gremlins at bay.
You can also insert some good fitting slips (gauge blocks) inside the extrusion to make it more solid when you clamp the vice. Also, very light clamping and small cuts can help. You'd be shocked with how little you can clamp something to machine it.
Shocking for sure. Tell that to all my broken Carbide endmills when I thought parts were clamped tight enough for DOC, plus having to explain why my underwear was stained. Check out Pragmaticlee’s bozo at 24:38. ruclips.net/video/l4W4PbAC9n4/видео.html
@@Blondihacks I think "caddywampus" is a mid-western term. My dad was an engineer at Douglas during WWII and after when they were trying to develop Vertical Take Off stuff. He usually would refer to things going caddywampus whenever one of the prototype shed a wing or something under test.
The good thing though, is that the pivot rod in the vise distorting your workpiece enough that you noticed it, did help you catch and correct the initial 5.5 thou out of tram! So it wasn't a wasted effort!
Aluminium extrusions are seldom normalised and have a lot of internal stresses post manufacture. They pretty much settle into some form of equilibrium but this all goes to rats when you cut the skin on a surface. The stresses are unbalanced and it distorts. The degree of distortion depends on the quality of the extrusion. Ask for normalised extrusion or carry the process out yourself. This lesson was painfully learned machining alloy extrusions to make a large scale 3D printer ( 1.5 m x 1 m x 1m!) Check the certificate of conformity for your stock, sure you got a good idea of what to avoid or at least treat with suspicion.........
Hey everyone. I’m going to explain this further here, since it’s a VERY common comment that I’m distorting the part with the vise. That is not the case, but perhaps that section of the video isn’t sufficiently clear. This is 3/8” wall extrusion and I’m clamping it lightly for these tests. It is NOT distorting the part. Near the end I check for that by putting the DTI on the top, above the wall of the extrusion. It moves 15 thou. That’s a huge amount, and not in the middle where distortion would show. The part is moving, not distorting. It is ROLLING upwards on the round bar, which is why removing that eliminates the problem. I hope that clears it up.
Blondihacks - thanks for the clarification. I too had come away with the idea this was distortion of the part. (Also, this comment isn’t pinned so it’s headed down the feed...)
It was moving up because the wall against the fixed jaw bends as far as I can tell, when the pin is removed the force is taken by the wall against the vise base so it doesn't bend so much. Otherwise the same would happen with solid block, and that doesn't happen with solid block
Actually, it looks like the front edge does lift from the clamping load, the max deflection is not at the center: imgur.com/a/ShOMb9k
Great video. How are the ways on the vise? I wonder if the round bar causes a rolling action on the movable jaw, which then lifts that jaw. The effect would roll the part towards the column. An indicator on the top of the movable jaw should give some insight. Just a thought.
@@clawtlr the movable jaw doesn't lift on this style vises because there is a wedge system pulling it down. If it appears to be moving, the whole vise is just bending to a banana shape as well or it is not adjusted correctly, or both
My new favorite thriller genre: Investigative Machining
Science! 🤓
How bout 18 plus machining?
Watching you debug this problem is such a fantastic way to instruct folks on the process of machining!
Quinn - what a great video. You have a special knack for concisely explaining nuanced technical information, while moving at a good pace, and keeping it fun!
That was extremely interesting. Didn't see it coming. Well done for the methodical approach to fault finding that issue. That is another of your videos that I will be using as reference material in the future.
I so much appreciate when you admit a mistake and talk through it, like having to tram a second time. Many others would be creative in post and wouldn't share details, acting like they did it perfect the first time. A very conclusive video in a couple aspects!
I can honestly say you are the very best with explaining things and with what you say. Countless videos ive watched after having a problem with some machining issue and still had the problem. Everyone on youtube seems to make the same videos or at least the same basic information given in their videos. But YOU QUINN always seem to answer my question. So just wanted to say thank you for all the hardwork you do with these videos. I know alot of work goes into them. You do a great job! Except for your intro with ur fingers waving around. Not a fan of that but you sure know how to teach and you’re extremely knowledgeable.
This is a great video! You lay out all the parameters in an understandable, implementable manner. Thanks.
This might be one of my favorite episodes, some excellent detective work there for a head scratcher I'm sure most of us will eventually come across. Thanks as always !!
I'm home from work, watching another of your great videos, home because I sprained a foot. Now I have to worry about tramming, nod, lean, and in my case, saggy knee! -I have an old Rockwell.
You ARE a gifted teacher! Thank you for all your efforts, and Merry Christmas!
As a novice to all of this, I am grateful for your in-depth yet very clear explanations... :)
With the 2" cutter... loosen the bolts bring the tool to touch the bed or ground flat stock. Slowly tighten all the bolts. I promise it works. The simplest way. I do it almost every week after tilting the turret on a Bridgeport. Excellent video.
I am not a machinist. I do not have a mill or a metal lathe. I do have a small hobby cnc and a wood lathe. I really enjoy your problem solving technique. You have spent alot of time explaining the nomenclature and your reasoning with words and diagrams. Thank you so much.
Thanks! Best video I have seen yet on problems of squareness on the mill. Especially good since I have the same mill. In the past I had always worked with Bridgeport type mills which have the capability to adjust for nod and when we trammed ahead we indicated from front to back as well as left to right. As a side note, for whatever reason, during my 20 plus years in several different shops I had never heard of "tramming the head". We always "swept the table" or "squared the head" but I was working for the last half of my career in IT so upon returning as a hobbyist I now hear "tramming" as the most common term.
First off, thanks a lot for the great videos. I've not done any machining for nearly 40 years, but I took a lot of classes in high school and college, and was also a "helper" in those classes since I seemed to have a knack for it.
I did a similar thing on 10 pieces of 6-in square tube steel for the shop teacher. What he had me do first was to make a precision angle plate that I could clamp the vertical side of the tube to, and then the bottom of the tube was clamped to the table. It worked out quite well and the surfaces ended up being within a few ten thousands when I was done as long as I didn't try to hog off too much on a pass. It was a fun experience. Have no idea what those were ultimately used for, and the shop teacher didn't know either. Just given a rough hand-draw on a sheet of oily paper. :)
Of course, Aluminum is a whole different game. I did little machining of it in my time.
Quinn, I just sold a PM932M-PDF I owned for 2 years and it was my first mill. It took me months to figure out how to get that machine running true. This video would have saved me a lot of time and headaches back then! I actually removed the column and head to check the surfaces between the column and base of the mill. What I found was that those surfaces were poorly machined, not even ground. I had to shim my column and that fixed the problem. It is very touch and go. I also found that tramming to the vise was more accurate than tramming to the table. At least that’s what my parts showed. Great video!
Thank's Quinn. Great lesson on Murphy's law ! Thank's for teaching us newbies how to trouble shoot problems ! Another great video, Happy Trails.
Thanks Quinn for taking the time to show us this, very interesting.
Well, that was fun. Probably not for you but for us. It doesn't take much to crush small cross sections with the mechanical advantage of a vice. When you are working to thousandths, everything makes a difference. Tracking down this sort of problem is like looking for a needle in a haystack and first you must find the correct haystack. Well done.
Nice presentation and diagrams. Trammed my bench-top mill the other day for a similar problem while using a fly cutter. Noticed there was still some cutting on the back side. Never thought about locking the head down during adjustment. You gave some good pointers. Thanks.
Another wonderful presentation. I like how you work the problems that are typically seen in the hobby shop. This is a new hobby for me and I began with your lathe videos and I recently purchased a mill much like yours, a pm-25mv. My son warned me about some of the peculiarities of vises and suggested that I go with a kurt vise to minimize that. Of course I didn’t listen and selected a less expensive one offered by precision matthews. The knowledge that you shared with us today might keep those Benjamin’s in my billfold instead of Kurt’s. Thanks for everything and keep up the good work.
Very interesting video. I always learn something here. I love the "old school" video effect at the end, really cool.
Shim stock is useful in so many applications. Thank you, Quinn, for reminding me how useful it is. Been many years since I have needed it. When I needed it, throughout the years, it wasn't there. Really. I'm a "grunt". PHD in GED. No respect, no matter what I fix. :-)
Wow, great troubleshooting on finding the problem. Very educational for me as a novice.
Thanks for a great video as usual.🙂
Love your channel, I hate it when my Cutter gets catty Wompus, but doesn’t everyone, thankful there’s a woman’s presence in the machining world, wish there were more. Grace and Peace!
If you wanted to get really crazy with it you could use machine epoxy to influence the column or scrape the bottom of the column and top of the base where the column sits. Stefan has a great video on this epoxy method. I am all too familiar with the very issues you speak of in this video. It can be time consuming to correct but it’s well worth it. That’s the only way to get great results on these mills i think. It’s all gotta be working together in unison. And the issue with it not holding an adjustment, I ran into that too!! Drove me crazy
Isnt machine geometry fun? :D
Good investigation!
Hi Stefan!! Thank You for recognizing the awesomeness of Quinn! :-)
I wish there were more people like you in the industry!
Aww, thanks! I wish there were commenters like you on RUclips. ☺️
This maybe the best video on indexing that I have seen: congratulations Quinn!
Thank you for this excellent investigative video. For a newby amateur machinist this kind of instruction is invaluable.
Thanks for an excellent video. I read that the definition of a machine tool is one that has the accuracy built into the machine. You can make a cylinder with a file and a vise if you can measure the shape and correct the errors. free form like scraping. Or spin it in a lathe and get roundness, straightness, perpendicularity, cylindricity, size from the machine. We build machine tools and have to check for the errors you pointed out. When one refers to a vertical direction which machine element is it? Axis of the spindle, quill motion, column Z, 90 degrees to bed Y, 90 degrees to the table top, vise jaw, etc. The problem could be complicated if the wrong thing was adjusted. If a head nod was "corrected" by column lean the tram and fly cut would look good but bores would be out of square. Good job bringing these concepts up in an interesting and informative way.
Traditionally, the spindle axis is considered Z on machine tools, and they are left-hand coordinate systems in X/Y
True, a lathe's Z is usually confused and called its X axis... Quinn, you have a much higher than average mechanical aptitude!
Best tram video on RUclips ! Of course you could also spend untold time scraping everything. The art of scraping Brutal .... Blondyhacks excellence in action.
Interesting Video.... Lot of information shared here. BTW thanks for sharing it. I guess what i took away from this is.... Don't start shimming the machine, before you check ALL other possible variables. A real learning experience for both of us....! Keep up the good work!!
A very high value lesson in sleuthing machining errors was just given. Worth three x the time invested at the least. Looking at the part in the vise the wire may have been deforming the wall of the stock inwards therefore shortening that leg of the tube lowering that side of the top that was being milled.
Machining the end first and clamping across the length may have helped the issue, But Hindsight is always 20/20.
Mahalo
G'day Quinn, Wow! I enjoyed the failure analysis even though I needed time to stop and process what you said. Good job!
I had it figured out the first time I looked at your setup. BUT made showed a great video of all the possible ways to adjust your mill. Thank you.
So, don’t take for granted. Great teaching. Good to invest into during the Covid-19 quarantine.
Crikey Quinn, my head just about exploded with that one. So many variables, talk about an ice cream headache.
Hi Quin.. this video wan very very helpful about troubleshooting squareness of the mill... Thanks you very much you share all this inforamtion with us.
Well, you learned something, your machine is trammed better than ever, and you got material for a video. A win, win, win for all!
Awesome investigation Quinn! I had never thought of using paper on the clamp jaw, brilliant!
OMG..You are the best. These are precious nuggets of info. Thanks
Great investigation and analysis. Thanks for sharing this!
Great video! I come from woodworking. Another thing to do early on is check your square for square.
This episode was both illuminating and insightful. Thank you.
Waterslides! Mole Hills! Trams! Your workshop sounds like a delightful place to visit! Isn't it interesting what other engineers call different things? We would rectify this problem by 'clocking' the head true or flat.
Maybe I should cut back on the recreational chemicals a bit. 😬
This was amazing! I actually enjoyed the ride of you debugging this! Albeit a novice, I imagined myself an EXPERT at some tradeshow watching the video and trying to second-guess and predict what is going on. You should almost put fixed pauses in the video like this, with a prompt -- "#3, WHAT DO YOU THINK is GOING ON, NOW? (write it down, no cheating!)"
I'm certain that kind of interaction would go over big at a TRADESHOW! Perhaps even making it interactive for those commenting to your thread! IDK.
You can check for head nod after you've trammed the column by mounting an indicator on the table and looking for any deviation of the spindle as you raise and lower the head.
I recall watching one video where the poor fellow was sure he could tram his machine simply by milling the table. I cringed all the way through it. He was adamant that he was right even after I explain how an out of tram column would leave scalloped grooves in his parts.
Everything in this video was usefull. I had a similar journey on my import mill vise. I discovered a .007 in high ridge on my vise's fixed jaw casting (must have been some cutter they used) which caused the vice jaw to tip at an angle when I installed it. Then I discovered the base of the vise was warped. I was seeing movement on my vise jaw when I tightened the vise to my mill table. I had a fly cutter that let me flatten the base which uncovered a tram issue when it ended up cutting on the back side just like yours. It seemed like you enjoyed troubleshooting your problems. I did mine too. Thanks for the video.
Awesome...thank you....you just saved me a lot of time and a headache or thousands!
Great video .
When I machine , I hold the work piece with 1/8" dowel pins .
Also the side pin I hold it in the center of the jaw . I noticed it was held more to the top of the front jaw, and high parallel underneath.
I'm a tool maker for 35 years .
I must say it was great video .
Thank you for sharing and explaining your trouble shooting technique.
Wow, that was some kind of detective work.
It's like you know stuff, and stuff!
I had to watch a couple of times to get it, but finally...
Good job!
Thanks, and Meow to Sprocket.
Now that was an emotional waterslide ride as Quinn fixes, fails, fixes, fails, and fixes to ultimately find success by applying the KISS rule with this type of stock. Issue resolution was an om moment. I confess that my eyes crossed more than once as my appreciation grew for what seemed to be a futile battle with the evils of nodding, leaning, kneeling, and tilting. May you always be my teacher. :)
Woo hoo!!! Another mill vid. Always look forward to your vids. Extremely well delivered. These might just get my wife into machining too. If only!
Excellent instructional video! And the Devo reference was not lost :-)
One of the First Things i did when I got my mill year's ago was I made a DIY tramming device which comes in the spindle and has two indicators 25 cm away from each other so I just have to have the same reading on each side and I'm 💯 okay ...fast and easy ....you can buy the same thing but if you build it properly there's no need it is precise as can be ....I don't say again that Quinn's videos are so good and informative it's getting boring to repeat myself every time 🤪
Wow, I was worried you were about to start going crazy with the shims. That plot twist at the end really got me. Excellent video, very educational.
HI Quinn, great video and some great sleuthin'! I know its an odd mix or relief and frustration when you discover the machine was fine all along.....(I once was pulling my hair out blaming my machine, trying to figure it out, but it was the probe on the Heimer being loose that was causing all the problems). I have found every time I face thin stock with the fly cutter if it has ANY opportunity to flex under the cutting load that I get that high spot in the middle. A second spring pass will usually reveal this as the cutter will make contact with that high spot and leave the edges alone.
Hi Quinn,
I've always been a little leery of wall strength in aluminum extrusions when clamped. I square up the ends and clamp along that axis.
When your part design cooperates, sure. What do you do when your part is a foot long? Mayne you live in a better world, but my Kurt and Parlec vises only hold 9 inches tops.
@@railgap when you have to clamp on the colapsable wall of an extruction what you do, if posible, is to brace the structure internally with whatever may work. even machinist jack screws could save you some pain killers.
hey thanks! this was all very usefull. i suspected the vice clamp force being the cause since the very begining.. which makes me feel more confident for whenever i get to mount my shop. and all these geometries, while vivid in my head, are some much more easier to undesrtand by observing the effects they have on the cuts. amazing content
Regarding shimming the column, Stefan Gotteswinter has a great video where he shims it with annealed copper and fills the gap with a metal-filled epoxy material.
Interesting video as always!
I thought about that video as well Nicolas.
@@jdstar6352 Most (emphasizing MOST) epoxies break down at around 400° F and can be scraped away with a soft gasket scraper or similar tool. There are some heat resistant epoxies so don't use them here. Caution is required because the finish of the machinery probably has a Bondo type filler under the paint and that and the paint could both be easily damaged. A soldering iron is a good way to apply pinpoint heat that doesn't spread to other areas easily. It will break down the epoxy while barely transferring any heat to the metal substrate. I've been doing this on RC airplanes without damaging the wood since college and I'm now retirement age.
ToT also has a great video on milling a perfect cube👍🏽
I love the never give up attitude. I learned the same lesson, the same way. The knowledge always seems to stick better when learned the hard way, huh?
We make "crush plugs" for that kind of stuff, to distribute clamp force/support the part between the jaws. Or sometimes if we have to hold a .001" or less flatness we put an indicator on the part while clamping to see how much clamping we need.
Great tips! Thanks for sharing!
I've found my fair share of tram issues with flycutters. Most of the mills at my school hadn't been trammed since they arrived there, so when I had a back cut that looked like .010"-.015", I got a little suspicious. I ended up tramming most of the mills there. Good for practice, I suppose.
Someone else in the YT machine shop mafia wisecracked something like "flycutter, AKA tram indicator" in one of his videos and I never forgot.
Old Machinist (Journeyman Mould Maker actually) here, 44 years experience, and guess what? Two things, Blondi.
Awesome stuff Quinn, I have the same mill and similar problem just have to determine if I need to shim the nod or the column.
Sounds like it's time for FEA! Looking at the side view of your setup, all the clamping force is through the rod some distance above the floor of the part. This will deflect the floor and the ceiling up on the rod side and tilt the top of the walls aft. The back jaw will resist this somewhat the back wall will deflect above the vise. If you move the rod to close to the middle of the floor I suspect the deflection will be greatly reduced.
Fusion 360 has FEA capabilities and it might be fun to see if you can approximate the results in sims. Wait, this is a machining channel!
Thank you for a most interesting, informative and thought-provoking explanation of how to identify the root causes of issues of machine geometry. My round pillar mill drill is keeping me well challenged in this regard but I now feel a little more confident in revisiting the analysis of its waywardness and might even be able to reduce the more severe of them.
Oh no, it’s Devo. I went through all of this with my first mill which was a mill-drill, otherwise known as a glorified drill press. I was trying to shim the column in two planes at the same time. It was a long, frustrating process that resulted in some improvement. The best part of it was an opportunity to practice logical thinking and patience.
This was a really good subject! Nice work!
I love our little talks
Thanks for this and all your other great videos. In my apprenticeship here in Denmark i was taugth that you should have a small tilt in your mill, as when you move forward the tool will cut with a nice surface, and not having any marks left by the end of the tool. of course the tilt should be very small. I would also take care to always go the same way so that your grooves align and you do not cut with the movement but against it. But thats for manual milling. A CNC mill should be 100 % aliogned as it compensates for the loosenes of the machinery.
Had exactly the same issue on my PM-728vt with a superfly. Followed pretty much the same steps. resolution, stop using wire on the movable jaw side. Tried both copper and aluminum wire.
Thank you, great video.
Ah, the joys of dealing with tram issues in knee Mills😵. This is why they sell kits to put indicators on Bridgeport heads to monitor squareness. I'm so glad I don't have to deal with that anymore. Quinn, you're rod method is good, it's just the placement of it was too high, causing the inner wall to buckle distorting the rest of the extrusion. Next time, try to place it where it won't cause collapse👍
It wasn’t distorting the extrusion, I checked for that.
hey quin .... gotta pump out more vids to keep us all entertained in these dark times..... greetings from the virulent uk
Stay safe! Crazy times out there.
Wonderful video. You are an excellent communicator.
My first instinct was definitely that something was amiss about the work holding of the extrusion itself. I've machined enough extrusions to know they never play by the traditional rules.
Looks like your machine is running truer and better than ever at any case. I need to go through your level of rigor on my own little mill for similar reasons, definitely has come slightly off tram over the last year or so.
Good detective work there. You definitely mentioned a couple things that I would’ve been scratching my head to figure out.
Very interesting. In the 1970’s I worked as a machinist in a shop that milled a lot of sand cast aluminum. Fly cutters with cemented carbide tools were the norm. Tolerances were in the .005” range. Things worked well. In the 1980’s I worked as a detailed parts inspector at a place that made parts for Boeing. If you had a whole .001” tolerance you were in high clover. If you know geometric tolerances you will understand that the .001” was in parallel and square as well. This shop NEVER used fly cutters. The flat milling was multiple passes with .500 diameter cutter. This was done specifically to negate any tram ( any direction) effects. Thought you may find this interesting.
Hi BH. Magic words. Stefan Gotteswinter. He did an realignment of his mill column using a made for purpose metal epoxy to, needless to say, improve the rigidity. It’s a hairy operation though. Need to get the alignment sorted before the epoxy goes off. An enhancement to his approach would be to install some adjustment grub screws to help set the alignment, but that would make it an EVEN bigger job ... BobUK.
Turn it 90 degrees on the vertical and repeat and see if the results are different. Limited to the jaw distance of the work piece, but for checking alignment may help.
Well, that's all cleared up. Just need a mill now..
i agree absolutly
Good to know you guys are cool with non-practising machinists.
Peas be with you.
Save. Buy the right house/garage. Make it a priority. You don't have to be rich, just want it badly enough for long enough that you fold it into your life's planning. I picked up a used Bridgeport for $1400 from a friendly machine shop, and paid only $200 to get it moved across town and into my shop by professional riggers. (but I'm still buying tooling ten years later, LOL - you can spend more than the cost of the machine on tooling)
Enjoyed that 👍 my 32l mill managed to have a collum way more than 5 thou out, on top of 6 thou nod in the head. I used gotteswinter video to epoxy the collum which worked well, shimmed the head, but one day I'll bite the bullet and grind/scrape it. Think it would be worth it to get the rigidity back.
Quinn, you are awesome.
That was were informative I would never have guessed at the round bar causing that problem Thank you for that
Great job, Quinn!!! Rolling on the bar ... Hmmm..... Something I actually wondered about when watching other machinists doing setups. How do you avoid the lean from pressures of the milling... Larger rounds? more rounds? Glad you're there.
Very thorough, another good video.
Sometimes it seems like when I have problems like that I wind up chasing my tail , when all I had to do was sit down and not think about it for a few minutes, anyway thanks for the insight, hope you and yours stay safe. Thanks
I've got 99 problems - and this absolutely is one!
Thank you so much for this video. My mill is even smaller, less adjustable and more flexy than yours, but I think you gave me some food for thought that I can use to address it. If only I had a bigger mill,,, and a bigger shop to put it in :)
Shimming is my only saving grace with my round column Pro Cut. The last time I ran the tramming process I used aluminum for shim. I will replace that with steel. Thank you.
3:19 I read this in his voice. I also responded with “You’re absolutely right!” Love your sense of humor. You’re up there with This Old Tony in my book. Keep it up. Doing great!
Btw your mill “...needs to be at 3 times bigger...”
My thoughts exactly!! Loved it!!
eh, shim happens..... PS did you see Stefan Gotteswinters video on shimming his mill with epoxy? Advantage, because it covers such a huge area and a fluid levels itself.
Instead of adding pieces of shim stock around the various bolting points, you can use a small mill and the error in the machine to machine a wedge that corrects the nod or tram problem while making full contact and preserving rigidity. Since you are using the machine's own error to create the wedge, you don't even have to measure the error to get the correct wedge. When I did this, I double-stick taped my wedge stock (1/8" 5051 because I had some) to 3/4" thick piece of plate glass. The wedge and glass were clamped down to the table, and shimmed until tramming indicated it was square to the spindle. Glass has pretty decent strength in compression as long as you spread the load with something softish (cardboard from a beer 6 pack is what I used) and a block of steel to spread the force from the nose of the clamp. In my case I was fixing a round-column mill drill, so shimming the base to column joint was really the only option. On a mill-drill the quill is the only useful Z-travel, so you don't really worry about if the column is perpendicular to the X and Y travel. If anyone tries this, note that the wedge machining orientation has to be correct so that it fixes the error instead of doubling it. In my case, the wedge had to be flipped over diagonally between machining and installation. In my case the wedge was square with a square bolt pattern, so no chance of machining it wrong, but if the shape of the wedge is irregular, you will have to think it through carefully.
I like to inspect gib adjustment with dial indicator & a tug when I tram the head, since the indicators are out and area is clean and clear, takes but a minute. 2 minutes if adjustment is needed. Keeps my machine's movement "honest" and the gremlins at bay.
Definitely. I just did that myself recently and found my Y axis was a few thou loose!
You can also insert some good fitting slips (gauge blocks) inside the extrusion to make it more solid when you clamp the vice. Also, very light clamping and small cuts can help. You'd be shocked with how little you can clamp something to machine it.
Oh hi Vic 👋 🙂
Shocking for sure. Tell that to all my broken Carbide endmills when I thought parts were clamped tight enough for DOC, plus having to explain why my underwear was stained. Check out Pragmaticlee’s bozo at 24:38. ruclips.net/video/l4W4PbAC9n4/видео.html
Always learn something, looked thru my tec. manuals couldn't find a definition for "caddywampus" keep um coming!
It’s in Machinery’s Handbook... uh... in the middle somewhere
@@Blondihacks I think "caddywampus" is a mid-western term. My dad was an engineer at Douglas during WWII and after when they were trying to develop Vertical Take Off stuff. He usually would refer to things going caddywampus whenever one of the prototype shed a wing or something under test.
* cattywampus.
"Cattywampus" is no big thing. Nothing that applying "finagle's law" can't correct.
It is the opposite of anti-godlin
The good thing though, is that the pivot rod in the vise distorting your workpiece enough that you noticed it, did help you catch and correct the initial 5.5 thou out of tram! So it wasn't a wasted effort!
Aluminium extrusions are seldom normalised and have a lot of internal stresses post manufacture. They pretty much settle into some form of equilibrium but this all goes to rats when you cut the skin on a surface. The stresses are unbalanced and it distorts. The degree of distortion depends on the quality of the extrusion. Ask for normalised extrusion or carry the process out yourself. This lesson was painfully learned machining alloy extrusions to make a large scale 3D printer ( 1.5 m x 1 m x 1m!)
Check the certificate of conformity for your stock, sure you got a good idea of what to avoid or at least treat with suspicion.........