Hey everyone. I’m looking into alternatives for finding xyz zero on my stock in place of the Bitzero. The project I’m working on will use 1" x 8’ brass, so as far as I can tell, the Bitzero would be a bit of a hassle to keep steady while zeroing, not to mention that the stock is extending out of both sides of the machine, so there is no corner to latch onto.
Can anyone point me in the right direction for getting something like this setup on the 5 Pro? I’ve been going down the rabbit hole of switching to GSender and so on, but after seeing Ryan’s demo, it seems to be a lot simpler of a process.
Yes, I don’t see why not. My only concern is really with the BitZero itself. In the videos I’ve seen, it doesn’t seem very secure and wiggles slightly when it probes for X and Y. I could find a way to secure it, but Richard’s setup just seemed a bit more solid with his probing technique.
I gotcha, thanks for the tip. I might have to go that route if I can’t do the direct probing. I just like the idea of introducing as little opportunity for error as possible in this case. 8’ brass can be an expensive mistake haha!
I’ll document my trials and errors here as I go in case it helps anybody later.
I took a look at the PCB for the 5 Pro and didn’t see any pins labeled for probing, which lead me to wondering how the BitZero interfaces into the machine. The BitZero plugs into the front of the machine so I’m planning on using that same port. I should have started with that thought, but taking things apart for little reason is kinda fun so at least I have that!
My plan is to take two wires and hook them up into a JST housing that I can plug into the BitZero port. One wire will be my ground wire which I’ll attach to the stock I’m probing, and the other will be my probe signal wire that I will attach to a 1/4" reference pin chucked into my spindle.
After that, I’ll use the MDI code that @RichCournoyer uses in his video and go from there. This is probably simple stuff for many of you, but I’m an electrical noob at this point. If anyone sees a catastrophic failure in this plan, feel free to let me know
From what I can tell, for the 5 Pro it uses the JST style connector. On the BitZero product page it mentions it ships with an adapter cable. I assume it’s some sort of mini xlr adapter.
I plan on using a multimeter to verify this setup. I’ve been reading a lot of your posts on probing and it has been very enlightening, so thanks! Maybe one day I will get into the custom macros & gSender.
It’s nice that the colors of the cable are shown in the photo. I’d hope the layout is the same for both connectors. We’ll see once you get the multimeter on it.
@rb_designs the man, the myth, the legend! I also bounce back to those posts every now and again
Success! I took some spare parts from the Shapeoko and wired together some connections for signal and ground wires. Plugged directly into the BitZero port. After that I followed @RichCournoyer instructions.
Here is a demo if anyone is interested. Thank you all for your help here.
