Dovetail cutter???

[Olle]

Originally Posted by sheepherder

It's the part of the mill that moves up & down.

What do you use???

Ah, I usually call that the "head", and the "spindle" is on the lathe. I thouht you were trying to make every cut with the centerline of the barrel as a direct reference. I assume that you have a dial and fine feed on the Z-axis, so why do the cuts end up wrong?

My procedure for this (as well as plunge cuts, grooves etc) is to move down until the end mill touches the work, zero the DRO and then start cutting. The fine feed on mine is like a Glock trigger, very gritty, uneven and can jump too far if you're not careful. The DRO helps a lot, as I can see the actual position without having to rely on the dial.

Working on these mini-machines can sure be aggravating, once you learn their shortcomings you have to come up with a lot of workarounds to get the accuracy you need. It would be nice to have those zero back lash ball screws, that should eliminate quite a bit of error.