Alignment Steps

I’ve put this page together to help other Omni owners locate the correct articles to help you test and align your Omni-E faceting machine.

If you are new to faceting and are experiencing great difficulty in cutting to meet points, please be aware that it may not be your fault. Due to the poor alignment of the Omni faceting machine components, there is very little chance that you will be able to facet a gemstone with good meet points no matter what you do.

If you suspect your Omni faceting machine is out of alignment, please read the articles I’ve written to walk you through checking the alignment. If you find your Omni is as badly constructed as mine was, you can follow the instructions on disassembling and aligning the various Omni components.

Warning: These steps can be tedious and require proper tools. You will require patience, a delicate touch and above all, a lot of time. If you do not have all of these requirements, DO NOT PROCEED. You could end up making the alignment of your Omni faceting machine worse. However you do not need to be a machinist or systems engineer to perform these steps.

Note: Any disassembly or modifications you do to your Omni faceting machine are your own responsibility. These changes will probably void your warranty. Proceed at your own risk.

Now that I’m done with the blah-blah, here’s a good way to proceed.

First – check to make sure that your Spindle Bearings are not going to flood due to a dumb-ass design flaw. And if you notice your bearings have been exposed to water/swarf and feel up to replacing them, the second link details a better sealed bearing to replace them with.

• Protecting Your Omni Spindle Bearings
• Replace Your Omni Bearings with Proper Ones

Next – read up on the different alignment problems I’ve discovered. I’ve put them in order of discovery from my own personal experience.

In my opinion the biggest alignment issue that will prevent you from achieving meet points is the Quill. You will need a dial test indicator or lever-arm indicator (as opposed to a probe indicator) to measure this properly. However with careful mounting and positioning of a probe dial indicator while carefully rotating the quill will give you a rough idea how much it’s out. If in doubt, consult a local machine shop for assistance. However, until you get all the major components of your machine in better alignment, you still will experience problems faceting to meet points.

• Omni-E Alignment Problems – Many Different Issues
• Platen Tilt Alignment Problem
  • Aligning the Platen
• Omni Platen Vertical Runout AKA “Platen Hop”
• Omni Mast Not Aligned
  • Aligning the Mast
• Omni Quill Disassembly

An excellent article to read in order to get good overall understanding of faceting machine alignment in general is this article at the US Faceters Guild website: Faceting Machine Alignment. It’s aimed at table-based faceting machines so some of the discussion won’t apply. And if the base plate of your Omni is as warped as mine is, you’ll have a tough time trying to find a reference surface to measure things against.