Probe with Nomad

I have been using my Carbide 3D probe on my Nomad Classic with no problems. I connected it following the instructions I was given. I just discovered that if the Probe is sitting on the aluminum bed, it grounds. The red light turns on. Is this normal?. If I place aluminum stock on the bed and place the probe to find my zero, it grounds and I can’t use it. Is there a way to isolate the bed?.

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@Bee pointed out on our team messaging system that you could try wax paper to break the connection at that point.

But this adds thickness too, so put the work on top of an equivalent spacer (wax paper)

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Why not just use the conductive workpiece as your probe plate?

Edit: I’m guessing Carbide motion

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Thanks to all. I still have not gotten an answer if it is normal or not. The wax paper idea is good but most of the time I use wood as I end up milling through the stock. I am planning to use a vise for a future project and discovered that the bed is grounded. Will investigate more this issue. Just discovered this now. Can’t remember if I had this issue with the triquetra probe. Hmmmm.

I remember trying to probe without the clip attached to the endmill when I saw that the probe block would ground by just touching it to the bit. It did not work. I crashed the endmill into the surface of my brand new (very long awaited and expensive) probe. Will try probing a block of aluminum with just the clip attached to the endmill and see if that works.

I am trying to get used to CNCjs to make it my default GCode sender. Your macros are a huge part of why I am excited about this. G28 is giving me a headache. I’m disabling it but need to be very careful with my work flow as to not crash the endmill.

Don’t these probes just work on conductivity? If so you will have to insulate the wok piece electrically from the aluminum bed. It could be any non conductive material functioning as a spoil board (HDPE/PE, plywood, mdf). If your clamp system mounts or threads into the aluminum bed you will have to insulate them as well where they contact the work piece.

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Sure. I am aware of this. I still would like to know if this behavior is normal for my Nomad. Trying to see if I wired something wrong when installing my probe.

Or you just use the workpiece as the “probe”…just sayin’. Of course, you have to have an accurate measure of the workpiece… and not be using CC.

I tried that today. I placed a piece of aluminum on the bed, clipped the ground to the endmill and ran a probing operation (using CNCJS) but it didn’t work. So weird. Trying to think what is going on.

If your bed is grounded, your stock is grounded. When your endmill is grounded and touches your grounded stock, you are just grounding ground to ground.

Anything connected to the probe input?

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I’m 99% Neil is on the money here…

I have the same issue when using my aluminium based shapeoko 3 and beaver pro. I use a bit of wax paper between the stock and the probe.

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Right!!!. Of course. I get it. I didn’t think this through. I knew all this but allowed the problem to fog my approach. Thank you. All this stemmed after installing my Carbide3D probe. I installed a dedicated connector to be able to unplug it when needed. Need to re-enable the banana plugs that I used to have for my Triquetra. This way I still have easy access to the ground and probe contacts of the machine.

Does anyone know what type of aluminum the Carbide 3D probe is made of?.

Id imagine 6083 but I’m not sure. Why?

Considering milling a hole in it. To find zero independent of mill diameter. Can you tell I’m bored?

Ha ha you have to be pretty dead on

Not really, if you hit two opposing sides of a circle with a circular cutter, the center between those will be center, even if it’s off in the perpendicular axis. Probe two sides for X and two sides for Y and you will have center. My guess is that it’s 6061, which is more common in the US.

Dan

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Like this?

:grin:

I meant the hole needs to be in the correct position for it to fully work assuming it’s offset or above datum

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Ahh, gotcha. You could probe the touch plate and use it to set the offset for the hole:-)

Dan