No idea how, but the YZ plate (at Xmin) isn’t perpendicular to my (nicely surfaced) spoilboard.
I discovered this because I noticed a noise when raising or lowering the Z axis and finally traced it to the sound of the bearings on the YZ assembly “popping” as they moved laterally on the MDF surface – was able to capture a video of the effect here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkcEblkbZ-I
I heard this noise previously but didn’t think much of it. Guess I should have paid attention.
So I got out my trusty square and what do you know, it’s out of whack by quite a bit.
No idea where this could be coming from and definitely no idea how to fix it. I’m curious if anyone else has seen this issue – or has anyone even thought of checking for this issue? I certainly don’t remember reading anything about it in the assembly instructions, but it seems like it would be worth checking on for sure.
This is usually because of how the end rail braces were clamped onto the rails, resulting in the XZ plates being somewhat angled .
You could loosen the end brace screws and re-align the plates so they are perpendicular. Make sure that the rails are still slightly inset from the edge of the braces (make sure that they aren’t contacting the XZ plates)
If you do re-align things, you should probably re-calibrate the entire machine (Z Level, squareness, tram, etc).
Loosened every bolt on the gantry and wiggled things until I found the issue - seems that maybe my strut plates weren’t 100% accurately cut; if I pull the bolt out of the Xmin end of the vertical strut plate and wiggle, I can get the YZ assembly nice and square, but the bolt holes don’t line up perfectly on the strut plate. Whip out my trusty drill bit and hog the holes out just a tad and everything went back together nice and square.
Probably something that’s worth noting and/or calling out in the docs, I suppose.
Now to go through the whole level, tram, etc. etc. process yet again…
