Before you recommend I look at the long thread on tramming or go to YouTube, been there, done that. A bunch of times. This is a little different.
My Marke II Longmill is relatively new with only probably three of four hours on it. I am learning (and making mistakes as I go). My spoil board is nicely surfaced and that hasn’t changed. I have been surfacing some smaller pieces and having good results, until I started getting stripes in my work. There was an incident with a loose screw in the router mount. I fixed that and tram was clearly out with the next test cut - those telltale stripes. They were faint but noticeable and worsened. I noticed the v-wheels on the X axis were not a tight as they should be (I could get some movement front to back - small, but shouldn’t be there. I adjusted the wheels slightly and the fit for the wheels on the X rail is spot on. I have removed the router mount, cleaned and reset it. I ended up with a .25mm shim where the four M-5x25 screws attached it. I had not needed that before. That brought me within .002 inches (yes, two-thousandths) in both X and Y over a span of 4-1/2 inches (dual indicator gage). I think that much aberration is inconsequential, especially in the width of a 1" surfacing bit, but I am getting visible striations and can detect a line with your finger - even see it. The couple of pieces prior to this job were almost as good as sanded. They were gorgeous in fact. I rotated the cutters on my bit - same outcome. I changed the cutters totally. Same outcome. I bought a new surfacing bit. Same outcome. Same outcome whether I run the surfacing program in G-sender, or just use a pocket cut. My work piece is solidly fastened. No movement there.
What am I missing, or what would you try? Thank you for your ideas.
Thanks for the assist. I learned a couple of things. Reducing the stepover kind of helped, but really just gave me smaller stripes. This was about the third or fourth time through the tramming process, following minor mishaps, and the only one I really struggled with. I’m really not sure why, but I found a fix. First thing I learned, sometimes old school works. I backed off the dial tools, put a piece of 1/4" cold-rolled steel in the router collet, and then checked it against a machinist square with a light source behind. That’s the same basic approach I have always used on a drill press. It worked and I am back with a great cut with a little additional shim under the router mount. I’m not sure why I needed shims this time, other than perhaps enough bumping and jarring eventually moved things a bit. The second thing made me laugh. I use a piece of marble for lapping tools, and it doubles as my tramming surface. It’s about 6" x 30". Marble is about as flat as you can get, I think, but it never occurred to me that my piece might be slightly tapered to one end. I was showing about .006" across the thirty inches, but by flipping it 90 degrees and using the same spot on the marble, I am only off about .001. Thanks for helping me work through this.