Last year there was a big thread of requests for Carbide Motion and I now found a big frustration point that I’m surprised I haven’t heard more about, especially from European folks like @Julien and @Luke.
After receiving a touch probe for Christmas, I immediately put it to work and loved it…until I found out that it doesn’t support metric endmill, nor any endmills that aren’t pre-programmed in. Trying to use a 2.5mm endmill? Sucks to be you. Want to use a 3/8" endmill to hog out some aluminum? Nope, try again. How about an imperial 3/16" endmill, that should be in there, right? Go straight to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200.
While I can make it work by probing with an 1/8" endmill and then swapping to a metric one and probing in Z, it just makes it twice as complicated as it should be. Ideally there should be a blank field where I can type my endmill diameter in so you don’t ever need a dropdown menu.
Does anyone have a workaround or am I missing something?
I’m afraid you did not miss anything and the (limited) list of supported endmill diameters are still hardcoded in CM, and the workaround is what you mentioned.
The reason you did not hear this particular european guy complaining, is because I use CNCjs almost exclusively now, with @neilferreri probing macros, so I can input any endmill diameter in the macro
I think it would make a lot of sense, now that CC implements a great tool library management, that CM would automatically pick up the list of tools in that library, and use that for the drop-down list for probing.
Yeah, @Julien, you cheated to avoid this issue. Although, I only switched back from UGS/CNCJS because I found I liked some of the recent changes and the workflow about the same as the other senders and am hoping it gets even better.
Thanks for the feedback @3DGG, @stutaylo, and @luc.onthego. I do hope the updated changes will address this.
I hereby place a formal request to the almighty @robgrz - may he reign forever - that he may consider this request and agree that metric-ification of CM should be complete.
Although, I only switched back from UGS/CNCJS because I found I liked some of the recent changes and the workflow about the same as the other senders and am hoping it gets even better.