Tramming Instructions

CNC Machines Shapeoko Pro
1

I’ve seen the videos on tramming the Shapeoko using a piece of glass.
I’m a little confused. Wouldn’t leveling the glass first before taking all the measurements on the glass always show the spindle as being in calibration
Shouldn’t you level the spoil board first. Then take your measurements from the levelled spoil board.

2

You use the glass pane and shims to create a plane aligned to the X and y axis, not the router/spindle or wasteboard.

You then try to align the router/spindle to this plane as best you can, the wasteboard can then be leveled.

Hopefully you end up with a nice wasteboard without ridges :+1:

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3

And how do you shim and align the glass pane without using the router spindle as a reference point.
Guess I’m having a senior moment.

4

A spindle square or a dial indicator is chucked in the router/spindle for this initial step, but the router/spindle tram is only evident when the spindle square or indicator is rotated around the z axis on the glass.

There are YouTube videos that explain this better than I can, English is not my native language.

The glass pane is not a requirement to tram, as the excellent Shapeoko CNC A to Z ebook shows.

5

Thanks for the feedback. But it does say on the Squaring Surfacing video you sent me you should surface the waste board before tramming and that makes sense.

6

I never used a glass pane to tram the spindle, but as usual there are many ways to skin a cat (is that the saying? not a native English speaker either)

I would think the glass surface only helps the movement around the spindle, to get a smooth reading that could otherwise be impacted by the local irregularities of an MDF surface. But I think you should surface the wasteboard first anyway, and then tram using whatever method, glass pane or otherwise. And then re-surface, to end up with a ridge-free wasteboard.

7

“leveling” the glass is to get it to parallel to the plane defined by the CNC’s linear travel. Tramming is to get the spindle perpendicular to that plane. This method allows you to not have to work against the error of an out of tram surfaced waste board and typically work with a flatter surface than MDF.

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