Tramming the FrankenMill with a dial indicator

Making the steering wheel adapter for the van I had to swing the mill head to 32 degrees (as far as the FrankenMill would go) I needed 40 but the head wouldn't clear the body of the horizontal mill. I hate having to tram the mill but it had been a while since I had done this so knocking it out of alignment was a "good" way to recheck things.
I have a piece of flat 1/2" aluminum tooling plate I use for the purpose. I clamp it to the table and set the dial indicator up.
I just take it apart and clamp the main post into the chuck.
https://images15.fotki.com/v398/phot...MVC010F-vi.jpg
Now I can zero the indicator and swing it to the back side of the plate to see what the damages are.
The first step is checking the nod. This was out by about .030 after swinging the head around so I set that first. I use a bottle jack to support the head as I loosen the bolts. The jack makes it really easy to adjust the head up and down.
https://images12.fotki.com/v1641/pho...MVC009F-vi.jpg
After a couple of swinging sessions I got the nod to less then .001 which is fine for the work I do on this machine. The tram I got to nearly 0.0, well under what the dial indicator will read. :)
https://images40.fotki.com/v697/phot...MVC012F-vi.jpg
This makes for a pretty cheap tramming set-up. I think I paid 30 bucks for the dial indicator set many years ago.
Mark

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Thanks astroracer! We've added your Mill Tramming Setup to our Measuring and Marking category,
as well as to your builder page: astroracer's Homemade Tools. Your receipt:

<div id="blocks"> <div class="block b1 pngfix"> <div class="bimg"> <div> <a href="http://www.homemadetools.net/homemade-mill-tramming-setup"> <img src="/uploads/168521/homemade-mill-tramming-setup.jpeg"/> </a> </div> </div> <div class="head pngfix"></div> <div class="left pngfix"></div> <div class="right pngfix"></div> <div class="blockover b1 pngfix"> <div class="title"> <a href="http://www.homemadetools.net/homemade-mill-tramming-setup">Mill Tramming Setup</a> <span> by <a href="http://www.homemadetools.net/builder/astroracer_2">astroracer</a></span> </div> <div class="tags">tags: <a href='http://www.homemadetools.net/tag/mill'>mill</a>, <a href='http://www.homemadetools.net/tag/dial-indicator'>dial indicator</a>, <a href='http://www.homemadetools.net/tag/tramming'>tramming</a> </div> </div> </div> </div>
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