The alignment with taught wires went well. Having built a more solid base than previous I was a bit more careful and took more time on this ocassion. Measurements for nod, gantry tilt and variations of nod along the Y axis (on the gantry) were made and re-made and shims placed under the gantry mounting bolts and Y axis rail mounting screws to slowly bring it all into line. These measurements are interractive but I got closer to perfect with each iteration and am very pleased with the results.

A slight delay to progress has been introduced by the reapearance of noise-induced spurious trips but a nice man has just turned up at the door with a mains filter from RS which will hopefully fix that. I have been getting by by plugging the VFD into a mains socket at the other end of the shed to everything else but that isn't a long-term soution.

I have fitted the plywood base and adjusted the auto-racking in LinuxCNC to get the X and Y axes exactly perpendicular and added a second layer of ply complete with an array of M8 T-nuts (the lower layer stops the little blighters from falling out!), fitted the sacrificail spoil-board and drilled it for the M8 nuts.

For the final test of the tramming I have skimmed the MDF spoil board and examined it for tell-tale ridges. I'm smugly pleased to say that, in the right light, you can just see some faint lines indicating in which direction the 22mm tool has passed but I honestly cannot feel any ridges or bumps when running a fingernail across it for either the X or Y axes.

All that's required now is to fit the mains filter, get the dust-extractor set up and I can actually start making things!

Kit.