I’ve only had my 5 Pro (2x4) for 10 days now so that should help you help me!
I cut a short address sign finally successfully, but today I made a longer sign- long enough to immediately see that it was not cutting in a straight line down the length of the board. It’s off at least an 1/8" in a foot The right side of the gantry is cutting closer to me than the left.
I turned off the power and moved the gantry all the way to the rear and looked at the limit switches in the rear and can see that that while the left side is tight against the switch- the right switch is at least 1/4" away. I don’t know if that’s relevant- just fyi.
I emailed support- but they’ve gone home for the day.
My recommendation would be to power down, loosen all the hardware, measure the diagonals, then gently push/pull the machine into square so as to have equal measurements for the diagonals, then re-tighten the hardware.
No, because the assembly instructions said (Square the Machine- pg.21) to square it up by starting with the gantry in front and tighten front screws then move to middle and tighten screws then move gantry to rear and tighten rear screws. It said nothing about any measuring needed.
In the picture the rectangle represents the SO5 base. The X is the measurement of each diagonal. If the two measurements are equal your machine base is square. If one is slightly longer than the other you are not square. Typically the longer measurement needs to be reduced. You could increase the shorter but that is physically harder than putting a clamp across the longer diagonal and squeezing. You would need to loosen your bolts and keep checking the two diagonals until you get them even. When measuring make sure you are measuring at the same spot on each corner. If using a retractable tape measure check that the tip of the tape is moving easily. That movement is equal to the thickness of that blade. It compensates for inside vs outside measurements. If that blade is not free or is sticky it can cause you to not get an accurate measurement.
Thanks for the reply. I totally understand the concept of measuring diagonals for squareness.
The problem was the stupid manual that said “don’t worry about square yet- we’ll do that in a subsequent step.” One simple sentence would’ve saved me unscrewing 109 screws and then putting them back again.
Anyway I did find it out of square by 1/2’ - it’s a wonder I didn’t break something.
I got it back together and carved my sign successfully this time.
And I see that the rear limit switches contact evenly now.
This step is to ensure the YR and YL rails are even with the gantry located all the way to the front of the YR/YL. At this point the gantry should have touched the front stops on both YR/YL rails. If this was the case you would not have had the 1/2’ delta in the rear as you described, sounds like you didn’t verify the front or back position to be against the stops as you completed your assembly.
It should not have damaged anything other than the material you were cutting.
I am glad you got it fixed. I did not mean to suggest you did not understand diagonals but we have a lot of people here on the forum that are not traditional woodworkers and do not understand the concept of the diagonals. Plus in the future other people will read your post they may not know how to do the diagonals to verify square. Glad you are going again. I am sure it was a ton of fun loosening and tightening all those screws.
The right side of the gantry is cutting closer to me than the left.
