For those of you with a horizontal mill, what do you use to square the spindle to the tube/CS miter fixture, etc?
I’m a total noob when it comes to devices or gauges that help in this regard.
Your help is greatly appreciated.
Brandon
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This is somewhat unhelpful, because my horizontal mill also has a vertical head that I can use to hold an indicator, but you can apply the same principles. I’ve included a picture that shows the process I use. I gently tap my vice with a soft hammer as I tighten the mounting bolts, until the indicator is zeroed as it sweeps along the vice jaw as i run the table side-to-side. It takes a while and I have to make small adjustments and repeat the process a few times.
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Thank you. I’ll look to get a dial indicator and work on a set up to square everything up.
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Depends how you are going to use it and in what orientation, but for quick and dirty framebuilding when I’m using the vise to set a cut angle (using degree gradations on the swivel base) I will just use a good precision square off of the vertical dovetail way, which is usually a precision reference surface, and just adjust the fixed jaw of the vise to the square. This gets me to 90 degrees and I rotate my swivel vise to where I want it from there. Not all horizontals can do this because it assumes you have good access to that reference surface. For angled cuts of higher accuracy when I don’t use a tube miter fixture, I just use a bevel protractor in the same manner.
If you are trying to set up the fixed jaw parallel with your longitudinal X axis, just project a perpendicular surface up from the vise fixed jaw with a 123 block, clamp it down, and align off of that.
The machinist term you are looking for is “tramming” and google will return a wealth of YouTube how to’s if this is confusing.
I’ll take a few photos in a bit if I remember when I head out to the garage.
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So I dunno what I was smoking when I wrote this but the term is not “tramming,” that’s a term usually reserved for alignment of the mill spindle to the table. As promised, here are some photos of how I do it. If I want a higher degree of accuracy I will break out an indicator like Nick2 shows.
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Thanks all. I ordered a magnetic dial indicator holder and dial indicator and I’ll play with it based on what you have all shown works for you.
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