Has anyone implemented a small, low-profile, probe on the 24R? The Tormach probe has a long profile and a large mounting pin. A shorter, smaller pin, version would be useful. For example, the Amazon product, below.
I actually use the same probe on my mill. If you notice the probe is powered. Snap in power supplies 12 or 24 volt are cheep on amazon. You must get the proper plug matching your mill and wire the supply to a vacant pin. I see the probe is available in normally open and normally closed, this wasn’t the case when I purchased. I inverted the signal using an 2n7000 hex fet and one resistor. The fet and resistor fit in the connector housing transparent to the user. I found one of these probes on sale for $40. With careful tuning you can get accurate results for most jobs at a cheep price. I’m sure this doesn’t replace the precision of the Tormach probe but less painful if you make a crashing mistake.
I think you can switch the N/C vs N/O on probes now in Pathpilot. I remember getting annoyed with my toolsetter being ‘backwards’ and then found the setting to switch it along with probe settings.
Thank you for the responses (traveling for biz and late response excuse inserted here). Keith, you mention that the ‘probe is powered’ - i presume this means that the default connection to the 24R is unpowered? I need to go looking at the specs for that connection; it does not seem to be very well documented.
I had this probe sitting in a box having picked it up some time ago to “play with” and thought it was useless because the run out was terrible. I just found out that it does have adjustment screws, so I may give it another go now that I know how to deal with that.
I managed to get it to work but it just felt “cheap” and I also need a TTS adapter for 6mm that isn’t an ER collet. I could see it would be useful for an application where you don’t have as much Z available as the conventional probes require.
@Daniel_Zimmerle yes, it requires +V (my SKU will take up to 24V) and GND to be supplied on the red and black and then the third pin (depending upon version) put a signal out. The DIN plug (for the CNC mill passive probe) specifies that it only uses two pins and expects a standard switch closure (normally open or normally closed in my case depending on if I select active or passive probe on a 440 or a machine that is similar wiring and with similar control circuitry). This probe doesn’t act like a switch, it is solid state and sinks current, so you need to convert to that if the 24R expects a switch closure or make other modifications depending on what the 24R wants.
24R tech doc shows 4 similar colors to some of the mills for the DIN plug but you would need to dig deeper and probably check how your ETS is wired before plugging this in (or figuring out how to wire both of them, should be doable) unless someone has verified 100% what goes where.
Pretty sure that not all of the controls have a switch closure type of input, which is probably how @Keith_Huckabee got it to work with only a FET. What mill and control board, Keith?
I ended up using a standard “clicker” 24V relay to test on my 440 and have moved to a solid-state DIN rail relay for another probe I’m evaluating/testing (having crashed my passive probe and am not wanting to buy a whole probe assembly given in the long term, I think it can be repaired.
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It looks like you can get this probe’s run out dialed in similar to larger ones, it takes similar patience and a much lighter touch when adjusting, given the grub screws are so tiny on it.
The solid state relay should work to invert the probe signal, same thing I did with a FET in the DIN shell that plugs into the 440 mill. MeanWell makes a snap in 24V power supply for this purpose. The solid state relay shouldn’t suffer from latency as the mechanical relay does. I bent my probe tip really bad! I straightened in a lathe and finished with a dial indicator in the mill. For the 440 the signal must be inverted.
You are on your own in terms of checking the circuitry on your machine and your probe, but I am operating without the SSR with one-wire probe outputs (the small one is NPN) by connecting to the input terminal of the pair that is pulled up to rail voltage (which normally connects to the other terminal that is GND). NO vs. NC was handled in PathPilot’s active/passive probe setting. I grabbed 24V from an existing power rail since the amperage on this is negligible. I dropped probe speeds to deal with getting errors during rapid successions of probe operations until I isolate what the culprit is.