Is CNC alignment considered a black art by many machinists working in the trenches, or is it considered a necessary skill in a shop?

I'm curious how many out there perform their own alignments if and when the need arises or they call a qualified machine tool repair specialist.

CNC Alignment? On a turret knee mill or old Bridgeport Series 1 type the turret or quill is trammed often daily. The vise is checked for parallelism to X axis often every day too by machinist.

CNC DRO repair and calibration I have had done by factory service personnel. One reason I had a guarantee it would work when they repaired it. Also they had knowledge of Service Codes or commands to use to run calibration procedures not in the regular operator manual.

Could I have done it if I had the factory service manual ? I would say I could have done it but is good to learn from an expert. Precision Checking and Scraping the ways I have not done as normally a machinist's boss would normally not allow me to Not be doing my normal work. Most supervisors also look at Return on Net Assets. If machine is more than 15 years old then it might be worth $0. Sort of like would you spend $5000 to fix a 15yr old car or look for a better new or used one??

Shortly after we got our first CNC lathe,the inevitable first crash happened. We called our local Okuma dealer who was only too happy to send a technician up to realign the headstock and turret. Upon getting the bill for said service, I decided then and there that we would all learn how to service our equipment from that point on. While every machine is different, it is usually just a matter of mechanical adjustments to align a turret, headstock, ram, sub-spindle etc. back to factory specifications. There are tricks to doing so and we have paid close attention to the technicians techniques whenever a new machine is installed, leveled and aligned. I'd say that if you can program and set up a piece of complex CNC equipment that you probably have the skills to figure out how to adjust any mechanical malady that might befall your machine tools.