Hi John,
As Will said it can be a maddening process. My process to keep my sanity is to try and adjust things independently, squaring first, tramming next:
- I will use shims on each side (and opposite edges) of the X rail to get to that “double chunk” state where left and right sides touch the back/front plates at the same time. Side note: no need to obsess over a tiny remaining gap. As far as I am concerned, 0.02"gap is close enough.
- this does require to loosen the eight X rail bolts, but I never had to loosen the Y-axis v-wheels to have enough wiggle room to insert my shims? (which are pretty thin in my case: aluminium foil folded over ~ 4 times, of course I may be lucky and have gotten reasonably square rails from the start).
- As a side note: squaring while the machine is turned off is important, but then it is equally important that Y belts tension (hence effective pitches) is even on left/right sides as @LiamN highlighted recently is his excellent thread
- then tramming:
- for front back tramming I decided to NOT rely on the loosening those same 8 bolts, precisely for the reason you mention. I will instead use shimming between the router mount and the Z axis plate.
- for left right tramming, the tramming plate on the Z-plus (and HDZ in my case) does the job.
- it is indeed a bit iterative: I will usually surface, then tram, then surface again. Without touching the X/Y rails bolts or v-wheels, just the router mount. The most difficult part is controlling own’s one OCD and stopping when it’s “good enough”.
So…basically what you concluded already:
About that final note/question, do you have a picture ?