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I assume that if I had received the ring with the unit that I would have just centered it with that and not known any difference. So the only reason I know it's not perfect is because I had to reverse engineer a solution. The nice thing is that I can fine tune the machine, like a manual sharpener. But then leave it right there and it should be perfect as long as the machine isn't moved, unlike a manual sharpener. Either way, I'm sure that the near perfect alignment from the tool is still better than what many would receive with a sharpening from their LHS.

2 passes will work. When I first got mine, I didn't have the alignment ring. So I had to use a carpenter's square on the counter to check the edges. Running 2 passes after each adjustment was enough to see how it was changed. After I got them square, I ran the machine to do the sharpening. So what I would suggest is running a few passes to check and adjust the level before running the full cycle. The alignment tool sucks. Throw it in the garbage. When I finally got the ring, it didn't line up to what I knew as square.

If you're using the same blades that have already been freshly sharpened (but ever so slightly off center), I would say 2 or 3 passes after adjusting the alignment would be sufficient to do another edge check to see if you prefer the new results. As others have said, this is a great scenario for the marker test - just put a new strip of marker down the blade between adjustments and make sure it's all removed before you use the edge checker to measure your results. Since dialing mine in this way, using the Sparx edge checker, I haven't had to readjust it. I've probably sharpened 80+ pairs since then. colins