Rail wear after 1 year
 

My machine does not work very hard (half dozen hours a week), but after a year or so I've noticed a sharp lip on the rails at the bottom of the vee (i.e. where the vee meets the vertical wall of the rail) - like the burr you get on a knife edge if you over sharpen one side.

I'm assuming that this is wear from the hard wheels pushing down on imperfectly angled vee rails. Can I harden the rails by blow torching them? Is the wear likely to progress to the point where the wheels pinch? Any ideas or recommendations?

We also got that sharp ridge. After keeping an eye on it for a while, to see if it got out of hand, we decided that everything was stable and then just left it alone.

You can only harden steel if it has enough carbon in it. The carbon content of plain angle iron is too low to harden.

My current CNC (not a MM) uses the same principle and has those ridges too. The wear seems to stop after a while and settle down. Unless it starts introducing errors into your work I wouldn't worry about it, generally is just means the angle is settling into the trafic it has across it.

Cheers
Bruce

Thank you for the responses. Leave well enough alone, then

Mine has the same thing.