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.
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…
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?)).
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:
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?
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.
@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.
You have to do similar things for any of the probe blocks (start inside the hole, start within 25mm of the lower left, etc). I’d probe Z just for a reference and then do X and Y. This would assume square stock, though we could probably work one up to determine an angle (though that wouldn’t adjust gcode like Estlcam can). I had one for circular stock, but I’ll have to track that down.
Anyway, I’ll probably order that probe in my Ali cart when gSender gets closer to a 3d probing (“auto leveling”) like bCNC or Estlcam or others. Even though I’m fascinated by the probing procedures, I find that I’m still more efficient and accurate enough for my work.
That’s exactly why I don’t want to use a macro for this (at least, not that I publish )
A BitZero requires someone to be in the circle, so there is a known reference point and its hard to screw up.
With the 3D Probe, I cannot assume anything about where the person has placed the probe because it has no such requirement. You could tell someone put it roughly at X, but if they are off by a bit, it’ll wreck the probe tip.
If someone comes up with something even more clever, I’m happy to try it This is good enough for my use cases and solves a real problem I had (edge finding with less than the BitZero’s depth worth sticking above my mod vise.
I get what you’re saying. I was just commenting that these touch probes are capable of multi axis probing.
Please share anything cool you do. This forum has always been about sharing ideas that may or may not benefit others. I think some of the original macros came from trying to help out nomad users. (@patofoto still around?) I didn’t even have my limit switch upgrade yet and I think I was using chilipeppr.
One of the early tool length macros almost took off @Luke’s hand, and look how far he’s come.
This is good enough for my use cases and solves a real problem I had (edge finding with less than the BitZero’s depth worth sticking above my mod vise.