Tram or Bit or other issue?

I would like to get the top of my pieces looking a little better. Is this a tramming issue, or stepover or the bit itself or just something I have to live with?

Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated.


It looks like a tram issue. I bought some 1 2 3 blocks to level my router mount. You can also buy some gauges that you can mount in the router to move around to see if you have low/high spots on the spoilboard. From just the picture above your spoilboard is getting pretty eaten up. I recently replaced my spoilboard and have been using the bottom of material lately to set for through cuts. So far so good. The spoilboard is made to get spoiled but it is a chore to replace it. My spoilboard is different from the hybrid tables. It is a big piece of mdf that was made to accept 1/4-20 tee nuts but using the bottom seems to work after replacing my spoilboard.

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Hi Ron

You did not say which machine you have but it looks like you may have several things going on here.
The side of your material has several lines from the different passes, you have lines from the machining on the surface and some of those lines are raised and shadow lines in the same areas.

I would first go over the entire machine and check for any lose fasteners, treat this step as a tune up. Then depending on the machine check your belt tension or the vee wheels and adjust as needed. I would check tram last.

Another thought is your feed speed and depth of cut. This looks like oak you are cutting and if your machine has any lose components and you are using a high feed and deep cut you can get these same lines you have. After your tune up and tram check tour cuts on some scrap hard wood and use a large diameter bit and shallow passes and feed. See what the finish looks like then. The larger diameter bit will amplify any out of adjustments.

I machined white oak before and usually the grain orientation can cause shadows even on a properly adjusted machine but it wont caused the really high and lows.

The little fuzz may be corrected with a final pass with more of a step over and less depth sometimes the grain don’t want to give you the best finish. Be sure your bit is sharp too

Anthony

Thanks for the responses guys appreciate it. This is a Pro XXL with the carbide router. This was in fact oak and I was running at .1 DOC at 75 ipm with a 1/4" downcut bit.

My waste board has seen better days and its on the list of to do’s to repair/replace it is just seems like a little bit of a chore on the pro (cutting new slates and making the holes etc).

Another thing that looks to be contributing to this is stepover. I don’t run over 75% of the endmill diameter for stepover.

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