Originally Posted by
bobeson
The shims I designed covered the entire interface of the column to the base. I cut various strips of brass stock, in 0.001 increments, and arranged them according to the gradient needed for correction. There are two shims needed, one for the left column side and one for the right. This left me with close to full contact between the column and base, depending on the elasticity of the brass stock I suppose. The trick is to build up a series of thinner segments overlaid on a thicker substrate. For example, I used 0.020 for the substrate, and a variety of thicknesses for the individual segments, so that the overall thickness across the shim increased only in 0.001 increments. The best way would be to use a series starting with a reasonable thickness, like 0.005, 0.006, 0.007, 0.008, 0.009, etc. I found shim stock less than 0.005 thick to be difficult to work with, but managed anyhow. You need to punch holes or slots for the column bolts, and slots for the alignment dowels. Be careful not to pull the column off the dowels, so the column will slide back into place easily after you insert the shims.
There are many ways to build a better shim, of course, such as using a surface grinder and magnetic sine plate to chuck a steel shim and grind the full surface properly, but I got pretty good results using just a variety of brass shim stock to construct my low-budget fix.