When locking the head after tramming puts the mill seriously out of tram

[Bill PhinnParticipant @billphinn90025]

I’ve just had the displeasure of spending nearly two hours tramming my Warco WM18 (it’s now within 0.01mm over a radius of about 7 inches, which will do).

Nine tenths of the displeasure was caused by the fact that tightening down the two locking bolts after tramming always put the perfect tram I’d just carefully dialled in out of whack by anything between 0.5 and 1mm – the amount things became out of whack being proportionate to how tightly each locking bolt was finally tightened down – something which, as you can imagine, is difficult to gauge without a torque wrench, and there’s no way you can get any normally-proportioned torque wrench up inside the head of a Warco WM18 and on to the upper of the two locking bolts.

Having to counteract this tram-altering effect at the final hurdle and hit the desired accuracy when everything was tightened down seemed practically impossible initially, and it was only by many tedious lockings and unlockings and tappings of the head that I finally hit the numbers I was looking for with everything locked down.

If anyone can suggest a tramming technique that would involve less trial and error in the present circumstances, I would be delighted to hear from them.

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