A word of warning for OCD folks: measure over a long distance, feel good about having calibrated your machine, and then proceed to making great projects. Do not, I repeat, do not chase your tail like I did for 6 months (well it was for fun and science too), it led to all sorts of crazyness. I did learn something: if you are chasing 0.1mm or less of calibration accuracy across the whole work area and for both small and large pieces, there are a number of things that will probably matter more than a dead-on belt calibration anyway.
My personal takeway is:
- do as mentioned above and you’re good to go for pretty much all woodworking projects.
- in all other cases, creeping up on the correct dimensions by adjusting the CAM (e.g. “stock to leave” if using Fusion360) is way easier than getting crazy over belt calibration accuracy
