Thanks so much for the help!
Here it is in action: Nomad 3 3DTouchProbe Test - YouTube
Now I need to wire it up in a more permanent manner, then configure the probe so the material edges are correct.
Alright, I now have the 3D Probe working for XYZ as well as BitSetter with gSender.
I did the following routine to make sure BitSetter was working as expected:
- Homed
- Measured 3D Probe with bit setter
- Probed XYZ
- Changed to an end mill
- Moved to Z=1 and put a cig rolling paper under it
- Moved to Z=.02, no grab
- Moved to Z=0 and it grabbed
I think tomorrow I might swap a few different end mill lengths and re-check Z after using the BitSetter macro.
So far, I am extremely pleased. This is a much nicer workflow when using a modvise, although I’ll probably continue to use the BitZero for non-conductive materials and anything I tape down.
You are measuring the 3d probe with the bit setter?
I have to admit I didn’t actually try that because I assumed it wouldn’t trigger at the right height. The bit setter is a button that has a certain amount of force before it is triggered and the probe has a certain amount of give as it is triggered.
Do you trust the zero probing with your bit zero and do you have it setup in gSender? If so, I’d be curious what happens if you probe Z with the bit zero and then switch tools to the 3d probe and then measure the height at which the probe is triggered on the stock (aka, run a z probe cycle but don’t have it change z=0, just stop when it is triggered).
If they seem to differ, I would also be curious if they differed by a constant amount or if it varied each time you performed the tool change with the probe.
I’m not sure on repeatability for that, but I wasn’t sure if the probing for Z would work unless it knew the length of the probe (same as when using BitZero, you touch off the probe).
You must have it unplugged before you measure the probe length, otherwise it triggers during the BitSetter routine.
If the tools measure the correct offset for 0, that’s all that matters, isn’t it? I can try swapping it out, measuring a tool, swap it back and check zero again, but that isn’t something I’d do during a job normally (only on a flip). I plan on doing some basic cutting ops today to make sure it’s actually working as intended.
The one annoyance with gSender is when I jog to Z max, it sometimes triggers the endstop and makes me click the resume button a few times until I get it off the end stop. Not sure how to fix this.
Thanks again for the help on this!
With the probe unplugged, I would have expected it to be off by up to 2mm (the amount of over travel it allows for in Z). If you get close enough for paper verification then it definitely not off by 1-2mm!
I wonder if your nomad bit setter is a lot more sensitive than my SO4Pro or if I should have actually tried using the bit setter with the probe instead of just assuming it would be wrong…
The next time I ran this, the Z was wayyy off.
I think I’ll use paper technique for the very first Z probe (or get BitZero working, JUST for Z). 3D Probe is still very much worth it for thinner stock (I do a lot of flatter aluminum stock).
The only other annoyance with gSender is whenever you open the door on the Nomad, it sends a feed hold, so you must manually type a ~ to resume (found here: Feedhold (the definitive thread?)).
Nate
Is there some fixed point that you could touch off of to “measure” the 3d probe? That’s what I did with another macro which applies a manual offset to the probe point to make it equivalent to having triggered the switch.
I figured out the “manual offset” by running the macro with an offset of 0, setting z, loading a new tool and using an alternative probe to find the same 0 point. That tells you how much the probe should have been offset. Then you can set the value and double check it.
OR, as you said, you can just use the bitzero for probing zero. If you are using the SMW vise using the built-in parallels and you use “stock bottom” as your z, you only really need to probe Z when you change to different work holding because it’s never changing in the vise.
That is a great point about the vise. I’ve been probing the top of the stock all this time 
So using the bottom of the modvise jaw, how do you set this as Z? Do you measure it once and then just set it to Z via a command? I’d love to know more about that process.
For my metric vise, the parallels are designed to be 1" off the plate and this seems to be accurate. If you have a different vise, check that it’s the same. Given that size, I have a simple macro that does a double probe (fast to trigger roughly, back up a little bit, probe slowly to get an accurate measurement) which then sets the point it stopped to z=-25.4 before pulling the tool up to the height of the parallels:
G91
G38.2 Z[-global.state.PROBE_DISTANCE] F[global.state.PROBE_FEED_FAST]
G38.4 Z[global.state.PROBE_DISTANCE] F[global.state.PROBE_FEED_SLOW]
G38.2 Z[-global.state.PROBE_DISTANCE] F[global.state.PROBE_FEED_SLOW]
G10 L20 P1 Z-25.4
G90
G0 z0
Excellent. I’ll give that a go. I got BitZero working as well, so I have options now!
Nate
Thinking through this a little more, how are you triggering the probe on the vise parallel?
Do you have something that is insulated and exactly 1” tall you put next to it or do you trigger this in some other way?
Sorry, I’m not super familiar with either the bitzero or the nomad since I only joined the Carbide train with the SO4Pro. I was assuming that you could just drop the bitzero on the base plate and then zero off of it. Is that not possible?
Oh I see. So basically zero off the BitZero sitting flat on the bed and then add 25.4mm to the value to get the parallel height.
I’ll give that a go.
that is very satisfying. i definitely will need to get one of those.
Thanks for the help on this, @crpalmer! I’ve documented what I’ve gotten working here: GitHub - natewalck/nomad3_gsender: gSender configs and macros for the Carbide 3D Nomad 3
I’ll be updating this as I figure stuff out. Help is welcome on the additional notes in the README there
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@natewalck are the macros that you call bitzero_xyz etc actually built for the amazon probe, or for the bitzero, but using gSender?
The macros are all for the BitZero, as titled.
For the 3D probe, jog to the X edge you want to probe and use the default interface option to Probe X. Then jog to Y edge, click the interface to Probe Y.
It’s problematic to macro up probing XYZ for the 3D probe as it’s not made to do all 3 in a go.
I can add a note on the 3D probe to the README to clarify this.
Why’s that? Something other than the Z not really being useful?
@natewalck probably means that it is hard to probe xyz in one macro because you have to make assumptions about stock size vs. starting position.
You could probe x moving to the left and then travel Y mm to the front and X mm to the left and then probe Y to the back before lifting Z mm and going to X-delta,Y-delta to probe Z but I never implemented that because there are too many assumed parameters to feel comfortable running the macro.
I personally feel much better just jogging around a little bit and running macros to probe each side and Z as needed.
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Exactly what crpalmer said.
Also, I updated the README to clarify a few things.