As far as the leveling/casters go… Almost EVERY tool I have in my shop is on some sort of castor/wheel set up.
The 1300 X 900 laser engraver, the 4X8 workbench/assembly table which has morphed into a bench top for a vertical mill, a joiner, a drill press and a sander. The shop built 36" wide thickness sander, the Dewalt thickness planer, the Rikon 14" bandsaw, the router table, the Jet dust collector, the 50 watt fiber laser and the AltMill are all on some sort of rolling assembly.
Hell, even the 10X10X10 cage for my golf simulator is on removable wheels.
The only thing that isn’t is my table saw with the 50" Biesemeyer fence with the 4X8 outfield workbench.
The large flatbed laser is on the same wheels as the AltMill, both set level to a laser line… but I never plan to move them, until I have to. If you run a search about others building tables that will have wheels on them (from a couple of months ago) you will notice I gave the same link for the wheels that I gave in this thread… with a warning about moving the thing around on a slab and then expecting it to be flat and level.
I am fully aware that if I ever move this thing, I will have to go through the same process of leveling and surfacing the spoil board.
Not all my tools are expected to be mobile, but, in extreme cases, EVERY one of my tools IS mobile.
@fastrider777 Like you, pretty much every machine/tool in my 13x26’ basement shop is on wheels of some sort. The only exceptions are my drill press, my router table and my mitre saw bench. My table saw, band saw, jointer, planer, bowl lathe, spindle sander, drum sander and Long Mill are all on wheels. There is simply not enough floor space in my shop to have it any other way. They all get moved every time I use them, with the exception of the Long Mill. It only gets moved when I need to get into the cabinets that it blocks when it is in its “operating location”.
I do not level it each time I put it back having moved it. I never saw the point. If the Long Mill can be used in a vertical position, if it can be used at a 45° angle to the floor - both of which have been shown to work fine, I doubt that if mine is out of level by few degrees it is going to make any difference. Clearly, the spoil board needs to be coplaner with the X and Y gantries. Mine is. My table is rigid enough that it does not rack when I move it. So far, after years of use and literally hundreds of projects, I’ve had no issues caused by the Long Mill being mounted on wheels.
YMMV of course.
We have a saying around here that bent things can pee too. It usualy gets used when someone is way to focused on things that don’t matter too much.
Having something level often isn’t the big deal that people make of it. I even dare to state that if people would let go of it, we actually would have a better world.
My table aint square, level, stands on springed casters that are not hight adjustable rolling over a rough concrete floor -that isnt level either- my machine is bolted to a 22mm slab of mdf , almost 2.5 years ago. The slab has never been flattened, gets used for all kinds of other jobs (including painting and oiling projects.) That slab is not connected to the table, not level, and is not straight. My jigs are dead straight thoug, to the machine, by the machine. That is where the accuracy counts.
The rest is a between the ears thing.
Yeah I get why, if you make everything level, you can work off of that and have it easier, but when you live long enough in a house erected in 1911, that was built using the length of grandpas leg as the universal measuring unit. You too will discover when level does not matter more than going with the angle the house sank into the ground during the last century, because is was built on old cloths that were used to kindasortha drain the bloody swamp beneath it.
There is no level, and anything that is, looks dead wrong!
Everything you said is true, we just live in different worlds, I guess.
I built super high end custom homes for the rich in the Silicon Valley for about 40 plus years.
They would always ask, “How much would charge to build this?” My reply was always the same. “It will cost (this much)… A little more if you want it plumb and level.”
I just sat at my office and wanted to know how different our worlds realy are so I set out, picked up my level and have it tell me the truth on how bad my x and y are off.
Checking for level with construction grade levels is not a guarantee of accuracy, as you’re relying on your eyeball and how well you maintain the angle of sight when looking at the bubble and its reference lines.
I tend to agree with Spamming Eagle; we tend to be overly focused on perfection when “close enough” is, well, close enough. And it isn’t just on the physical aspects of our lives… Take our relationships, for example. How about our own bodies? Do you really think for a second that your arms are both exactly the same length; what about the positioning of your ears, eyes, shoulders, etc?
@ApexWoodworks I agree that close enough is indeed close enough as perfection doesn’t really exist.
I also can’t stop myself from pointing out that flat and level are mutually exclusive. Unless the Earth is flat then level is the surface of a sphere, but maybe not a perfect sphere. The Earth is an an oblate sphere constantly being stretched by the Moons gravity but I’m not sure if the gravitational field changes or stays the same. Granted at the scales most of us work at level is “close enough” to flat.
This also means that when @fastrider777 built a plumb and level house in Silicon Valley the second floor was just a little bit bigger than the first!
And yes, I’m a little OCD, but it’s fun sometimes.
And… while all of that sounds deep and mind blowing…
I used the same tape measure on the second and third floors of these houses…
Are you saying that they stretch just a “little more” at these higher elevations?
Because when I look down at my tape measure on the first floor and checked the dimension of the room, it was 25 feet, it was 25 feet at the second floor and 25 feet at the third floor.
Maybe you thought I was building houses on theory, and never pulled the tape out after the first floor, and I just projected the dimensions out into space, while connecting the dots at a theoretical height above the first floor.
I’m not that smart, I just used the tape measure, and read from the plans.
@fastrider777 What I am saying is that two plumb lines can’t be parallel. All plumb lines point from where they are hung to the center of gravity of the Earth and form a V shape. But the Earth is so big that unless your house was many miles in size the difference is so slight that you can’t measure it with the tools at hand.
It’s just a “thought experiment” to show that close enough is all we can really achieve. If you were building the world’s longest bridge or largest dam the difference between flat and level would actually matter.
I find that when you take things to extremes these small things become apparent. This really big house on planet Earth has plumb walls.
For a regular sized house, or even a mansion, the difference is probably like a micron or something but it’s still there. I think it would have been fun to ask the big brains in Silicon Valley if they wanted their house to be plumb and level or square to see if they knew they couldn’t have both.
Like I said I’m kinda OCD and can’t ever shut my brain off. If I don’t leave the radio or TV on I’ll lie awake all night thinking about silly things like this. OCD is only fun sometimes. Case in point, I’m sitting in an office chair, the swivel kind with five wheels. When I got it I had to try it with the wheels in all different orientations to determine which was the back wheel. I then marked the “back” wheel with tape so I don’t accidentally sit in it the “wrong” way.
EDIT: I just picked your house building as an example because you mentioned they always wanted plumb and level. I’m sure you built nice houses or you wouldn’t have had business for 40 years making them especially in a place like Silicon Valley.
This has gotten so far off track that I’m not sure what to do with it. It clearly has taken away from the original post in which the OP was chuffed at having assembled his AltMill. For those who want to keep up the fascinating discussion, keep an eye peeled. I will be splitting this soon.
You don’t need to split this off, this is my last reply.
Your thought process dictates that the lines representing the walls can only radiate out from the center of the earth. Also, the floor of your giant house has a curve to it, following the curve of the earth… therefore, you are neither level, plumb or parallel.
In my world, A house that big would sit above the ground at either end, but in the center would be excavated very deep into the earth, so as the floor would be a straight line between all the exterior boundaries. The walls would be constructed so as they are 90 degrees to the floor. plumb, square and parallel. Think of it this way, turn this into a GIANT pool. The coping of the pool would be below the water level in the center, because the water is affected more by the gravity of the earth than seeking to be level. Think Giant Square Box, built like a house, set on top of the surface of the earth. All four corners of the box aren’t touching anything. it only touches in the center.
The World Trade Center Towers or any square & parallel skyscrapers were/are not “slightly bigger” on the top floors.
I think my posts have come across as way more seriously than I intended and I apologize for that. These are my closing thoughts as well.
The word plumb dictates that the lines representing the walls can only radiate out from the center of the Earth. At least it does to me, but hey I’m mentally ill and take things very literally.
I’ve never built built a whole house but when I built a shed that’s the way I tried to build it but it probably wasn’t plumb, parallel or square by the time I was done. I certainly don’t have the skill set to go build houses for rich people, or poor people for that matter. I just have an overactive brain that I can’t stop from thinking the crap out of things.
Anyway sorry if I came across wrong and took the fun out of things. I guess this time I wasn’t “close enough” to my mark! I also forgot to say earlier that I like your table set up and custom dust shoe. Nice work! I look forward to seeing what kind of things you make if your inclined to share them with us.
Your train of thought for your giant house misses a dimension that will become pretty important when dealing with a house sticking out roughly halfway geostationairy orbit.
Time does weird things when closer to a gravity well. It tends to move slower the deeper in you go. This means that time for the roof is not the same as time for the front door.
This would not only result in -unsquare- walls, but would also result in hearing the doorbell on the attic..
Before it was built.
Rang, I meant rang.
This special relativity stuff is soo difficult to keep straight.
