Is it true the touch probe is no longer going to be offered any time soon?
Last I read boards were going into production.
Whats x carve guys using, any one know ?
The community has this: http://www.shapeoko.com/wiki/index.php/Touch_Plate#Touch_probe
and more options at: https://www.shapeoko.com/wiki/index.php/Touch_Plate#Touch_probe
The BitZero v2 is now available:
Temporarily on hold apparently per
well that leaves me very disappointed. guess they couldn’t pull it of.
It’s coming, be patient (I’ve held it in my hands, and offered my opinion)
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I’m done waiting on these guys.
I’d say it had better be a 4’ gantry beam machine. (Except I just blew the budget on the xxl)
If you’re willing to wait 3 weeks for shipping, here’s a z-probe for $5.
Haven’t found a corner version yet…
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Touch probes operate right now with your controller board… it’s just not supported with the CM tool-chain, unfortunately.
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Please note the plates as linked to by @Biologyben are a bit different from a formal probe which is able to probe non-conductive materials and to access arbitrary points on an object, allowing use as a digitizer.
There is a fairly popular corner touch plate marketed under the name Triquetra — belike there are others (and it’s kind unbelievable to me that someone would charge $20 for a spreadsheet (good thing they don’t have access to an old app which would convert a spreadsheet into a stand-alone Windows executable) — but it’s a trivial thing to mill one’s own using a block of conductive material (hmm, aren’t there conductive plastics?)
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I have to say I knocked up my own touch plate from a headphone jack, some wire and a piece of 10mm aluminium. It might not be to 0.001 mm but easily within 0.2mm every time - the only thing it’s lacking is a executable homing code - but thats more carbide motion lacking a programable button…
If you need to probe there are certainly easy ways to do it.
Yeh same here, just a piece of ground steel bar or aluminium works very reliably but it is annoying to keep having to type the code manually each time! I miss the macros that ugs used to have.
When the toucprobe is officially released the function will hopefully be added to CM 
I’m excited to find out what this secret project is that took over the touchprobe!
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I understand making my own is a relatively easy project. I would have done it, including switching to UGS for ease of operation, had I known boards weren’t really in production.
Was really hoping Carbide 3D was stepiping up there game and offering some real integrated accessories (disappointed is all).
The boards being in production or no doesn’t matter if there are no resources for:
- programming (arguably this had to wait until after CM4 and Grbl 1.1 were released — and they’re still in beta)
- testing (see above)
It’s a small company which has to pick and choose what to develop and release when. Probably this has something to do with the poll from the beginning of the year — I’m pretty sure I know what the big surprise is, but it’s only a guess, and I never got to see the poll results. Probably we’ll all know come April 1 — though I doubt it’ll reference the original Shapeoko 3.
I’ve been using this one for months now. 95% of the time it is how I set zero on my XXL.
The Triquetra guy gives you what you need to create gcode for each tool diameter. Setting zero involves running a very short zero-setting gcode job in UGS before running your actual job.
@reibuehl
I just bought the “P3 touch plate with g-code generator” (that is what it says on my email invoice). I don’t remember if I made my own cable or if one came with it. The fellow who sold it was really helpful in getting set up.
Here’s a Thingiverse link for the file for a corner finder:
@WillAdams
Don’t mean to hijack the thread but for those of us who are about to pull the trigger on our first machine what do you mean by “I doubt it’ll reference the original Shapeoko 3”? Are we talking an accessory? That comment makes me think a new machine.