I was curious as to any “Best Practice” for insuring depth consistency when performing a tool change in the middle of a project.
I am struggling with this and can’t seem to get it right.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Are you using a probe?
Use a probe. Can be as simple as some aluminum foil and a couple wires…but you need a probe.
No probe I’m just homing with a piece of paper. I’ve been waiting on Carbide 3D to stock their probe. Any suggestions?
This or any conductor of known thickness
I see. I’m definitely interested in this. Any additional guidance on building one?
Which machine do you have?
On the SO3, there are connectors for a probe on the controller. Two wires, one to your end mill and the other to a peice of metal (I use foil or blank PCBs).
I have the SO3 XXL. Brand new…
Hopefully the Carbide 3D Probe will be back in stock by the end of this month.
See: https://www.shapeoko.com/wiki/index.php/Upgrade_Overview#Probe and the following sections for some notes on this.
Ok…So once I get a probe working does that take care of changing cutters? My concerns are still making sure that the bit I’m putting in is consistent in depth setting to the bit I’m replacing.
If I go from a smaller #102 to a larger #201…since larger bit is much longer.
What we have officially on that is at:
I’ve used the Probe in-between separate files for tool changes and it’s wonderfully precise.
Having the probe all by itself doesn’t solve your problem, you need to do a little work at each tool change.
The short version: Rezero Z after the tool change.
Long version: Save your gcode as a separate file for each each tool. After you run with a given tool, the machine will stop. Change your tool, rezero Z, load the next file and go. It might be obvious, but this means you need to set up your Z-zero as something that will still be there when you get to the tool change. Sometimes, that can easily be top of stock, sometimes it’s better to be bottom of stock - depends a lot on the situation and how exactly your particular probe setup works.
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