Hello, I’m just finishing up my xcarve build and in curious about the v wheels calibration and belts. Is there a good way to describe how easy or hard it should be to move the the spindle. I have to hold the waste board down with one hand to move to axis, it feels a little too tight , but what do I know?
for the v-wheels: put the excentric nut all the way open, roll the carriage and feel how smooth it is. If you yank it up and down/backand forth you’ll feel some play.
Now incrementally tighten the excentric nuts, you need to find the sweet spot where it stays that smooth while reducing the play to zero.
for the belts, my experience is that you can tighten them as hard as you MANUALLY can tighten them. if you use tools of any sort, you’ll probably end up with too tight belts
They say the belts will stretch out a bit when they are new so beware of that.
I’ve got my V-wheels to where I can easily move them with 2 fingers, but it’s a little more difficult with 1 finger. As for the belts, on my 1000x1000 machine they’re set to where it takes ~3.15 pounds to lift them up 1" at mid-span.
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Not sure if something is different between your machines and mine, but with the eccentric nuts all set to the widest distance, my x-axis is still really stiff, and there is absolutely no play in the carriage.
Each machine is slightly different, and manufacturing tolerances can add up. It sounds like yours added up in a good way, which will let the v-wheels wear down a lot more before needing to be replaced.
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