When milling the Dominion turntable I noticed that my ShapeOko 2 wasn’t square – or to be more accurate: I noticed that the cutter took about 1 mm more of the surface in one side than it did in the other side.
At first I just thought that the lumber didn’t have the same thickness in both sides but when I milled the second part I noticed that the difference was consistent, so I made the conclusion, that my ShapeOko 2 wasn’t square.
After some considerations I came up with the following idea: I bought a digital dial indicator and constructed a holder so it could be mounted in the bracket for my spindle. It looks like this:
The holder consists of two parts: a square to be attached to the dial indicator and a round piece with diameter 43 mm that fits the bracket for my spindle.
I then mounted the thing in my ShapeOko 2 and started to measure it’s height above the surface. Sure, there was a difference from one side to the other of about 1 mm.
I then adjusted the frame by lifting or lowering each corner by loosening the screws and move the y-rails before tightening the screws again. After some fiddling (read: a lot) I finally ended up with the following measurements for the four corners.
With a difference of only 0.04 mm I’m very pleased with the result. 🙂