Honestly, this is kinda what is sticking in my craw…my machine should be good. I attempted a project a few years back that required simple wood joints and I had such a hard time I blew my whole machine up for an all metal, screw driven rebuild (New DIY CNC (not MPCNC)). While I haven’t cut much since, my first project was in plastic and as I recall the results were really good, dimensionally.
While I don’t regret the rebuild, I guess I was expecting perfection right out of the gate which is probably pretty unreasonable. Everything needs tuning and offsets, even the Haas I used to run at my old job. Also, wood is freaking weird…I probably get too bent out of shape over a material that is inherently dimensionally unstable, non-homogenous, and frankly sometimes hard to even measure properly.
I went back and measured the part from last night and its really not off by as much as I thought, I was just really annoyed when it didn’t fit first try, after all this effort. While the mortise is pretty uneven (there seemed to be a knot in one of the layers), the overall dimensions were not far from the target. I think I just need to put in the work to make some offsets until my wood joints fit together and just be satisfied with that. I will be doing some aluminum in the future and that will be a better benchmark than plywood. Thank you everyone for the input!