Trammagic – Mill Tramming Tool

with 2 Comments

 

Trammagic mill tram tool on my Enco bed knee mill.
Trammagic mill tram tool on my Enco knee mill.

There are a lot of tramming devices on the market already and there are easy ways to do it with some tools already available, but I found a few challenges in the tramming process that I figured I could address. My CNC mill occasionally requires tramming, usually after service, and with the enclosure I can’t walk around it. Even my Enco knee mill is against a wall making visibility on the backside difficult. Additionally, I constantly wanted different sweeps and moving the indicator in and out on a tram tool is extra steps. With different sweeps it accommodates different bed sized easily, and you can easily test tram with the bed in different positions.

This goes straight in a ¾” collet and can sweep anything within the 3” radius. If you want to do shorter than 3” you just go +/- in Y or X. That doesn’t work in all use cases, but does for most. You can check collet runout too by mounting the tramming device 180 out in the collet without turning the spindle. This allows you to eliminate collet runout for erroneous tramming measurements. I also wanted to use a standard off the shelf indicator. Tram devices like the Edge system are a waste of two good indicators. The tram tool is important, but I will use that indicator on my more projects, so it had to be easily removable.

The real benefit is that indicator turns 360 degrees in the sweep so you can always see the face. You can angle it at any angle to get a good look at it and preserve steady parallax. Allowing for consistent readings and repeatable results. The bearing arrangement to make this work is where the magic happens. Well worth the engineering (albeit simple) needed to make it all cook!

I have named the device Trammagic. It’s an ode to an old karting manufacturer called Trackmagic. Anyways, it was a fun build that involved the mill and the lathe, with both manual and CNC operations. I really enjoyed the process!!

2 Responses

  1. Jack Mosley
    | Reply

    Simple and effective- what could be better?

    • Chris
      | Reply

      It’s pretty slick, Jack!

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