"Harold & Susan Vordos" wrote in message ...
"Lurker" wrote in message
...
A few years ago, a designer of a special machine was said to have
made the remark during testing that a few 'shims' would correct a
minor problem. The VP of that division overheard him and said
".... no shims!" So the designer immediately rephrased and said
"Okay, a couple of spacers..."

But seriously, what's wrong with using shims? Shim stock is sold in
a variety of materials ,thicknesses, and shapes.

The use of shims for machine tools is sort of bush league. One of the
problems of shims is if you dismantle the object, there's no guarantee the
shim will be replaced, nor that it will be replaced where needed. In
machine tools, you pay for precision, which can include scraping or
precision grinding. Shims are a dodge to avoid doing so. That's not to
say that a shim doesn't work. Of course it does. You just don't have as
much control over the end result that you might have by doing it "right".

I'll add a little here, Harold. With the particular mill in question,
the column tilts for angle milling, and there's no guarantee that the
shim will be correct for any other position other than with the column
square to the table. I just bought one similar but smaller, but
haven't had time to lay the base and column out to see if there's a
problem there, or where the head mounts to the column dovetails. I
have to say, I'm impressed that such a small machine has an R-8
spindle taper, and it seems to be quite rigid for it's size. For
something like model building, and with it's $279 price, it seems to
be a pretty good value at first glance. Time will tell the full
story.