Power Route Gantry Slightly Twisted/Misaligned?

[aberrant]

Hey all, I'm pretty far into my Power Route build. I've just mounted the gantry to the body and tightened everything down and I was about to move onto the Z plate but figured I should check some measurements first. I noticed that the left side of the gantry is approximately 1/16-3/32 ahead of the right side (left side is closer to front crossmember than the right side). Is this something I should be concerned about? What can I do to try to fix this? Is this something the anti racking cables would take care of? I'm trying to get everything as perfect as I can during the build.

Thank you for the help!

[blinsc]

It could be a couple of things. The gantry could be mounted slightly out of square on the Y-axis bearing blocks. This is easy enough to fix - just loosen the bearing blocks and twist the gantry, then tighten them back down. It helps if you back the gantry all the way up and clamp it using some spacers (eg, 1-2-3 blocks) while you're tightening it. This assumes that your table/frame is also square since you're using the cross member as the reference.

Another thing is it simply could be some slop in the parts - the aluminum extrusions, the gantry supports, the bolt clearance holes, etc. Not all of them are particularly precise and especially when combined, could easily be several millimeters off. The good news is none of it really matters. The only thing that matters is that it cuts straight/square.

Here's what I recommend before you do anything - take a real measurement that does matter. The easiest way to do this is to use the router to drill four holes that form a rectangle and measure the diagonals. Personally, I use 1/4" precision steel pins and a rectangle that yields a diagonal measurement of 22" from outside edge to outside edge of the dowels. Once you have a baseline, you can tweak the gantry.