Wired Probe and Tool Setter For 1500 MX

Mill
1

Has anyone had any luck with wired TT and probes for the 1500 MX?

2

I’ve never seen a post from anyone that actually has a 1500. You are likely the first.

3

Thanks Harold. It is a bit on the expensive side for a hobbyist. I am just at the “Thinking About It Stage”. Seeing that it uses the same PathPilot as the other machines, I’m sure I will be able to have some questions answered on this forum.

Best… Richard

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4

Richard,

Compatibility of the wired probes and tool setter are planned for the 1500MX but there is no specific date on when that would be available.

Thank you,
Norman

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Thanks for your reply Norman. Just curious, do you have any idea at all as to timing. I have a nice, converted benchtop mill that has a tool setter and probe. This is strictly a hobby for me so spending around 50K for a purely novelty item is a big deal for me. At 62 years old, I can assure you I have never spent this much on a novelty item and probably never will again.

Everything I do is proto-type one off stuff, so I spend more time setting up than running parts. This is why the probe/TT is a deal breaker for me. I can’t imagine spending 50K on a machine and not being able to use these tools. Adding an additional 6K to the budget is just not in the cards.

If you can give me some idea of timing, then I can decide if I should buy it and wait for the wired upgrade or buy something else.

Thanks again for your time… Richard

6

You can save yourself 25k on a brand new 1100mx with wired tool setter and it even has twice the table weight.
And it’s even on sale!

7

I thought the 1500MX was designed for wireless probes? I shudder to think what a wired probe would do with a series of 1200 IPM rapids.

A DMG Mori won’t accept your benchtop mill probe either. That doesn’t make a DMU a novelty item.

I think you should go with an 1100MX if you want retro features now. You’ll still have to find a way to switch your prob to a BT30 holder.

I trust Tormach to implement wired probes eventually, or some member of the enthusiast community will figure it out. Either way, I’m not sure I’d want to see what happens to a wired probe at full table speed.

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I posted some information in this thread about the probe and ets used on the 1500. Neither I, nor anyone at Tormach has confirmed my ID of the probe and ETS but I’m fairly confident I have it right. In theory, one could splice the wired toolsetter and probe into the machine’s I/O for the wireless transceiver using the documentation I linked to. However, you’d need a way to detect the wake up signal from the machine and provide an appropriate ready response back. This would be relatively trivial with an arduino or raspberry pi if you’re into such things.

Were it me, I’d probably just go with an 1100 which is still likely to require that you alter the connector on both of your devices, or sell off your old equipment to help finance the new machine.

FWIW, I do almost exclusively one offs and prototypes in my 1100MX and while the ETS has definitely saved me a lot of time, after 6 years of ownership, I still don’t have a probe, just a haimer (and an edge finder in my recently acquired 440). Sure, I’d love to get a probe someday as I know it will speed things up a bit, but the haimer works just fine and has been for a long time now. Point is, both devices are niceties, not requirements. Another way to look at it is, 50k is already a substantial investment on something that you have described as a novelty. At that point, does another 5k really make that much of a difference, and if so, perhaps a different machine (like the 1100mx) would be a better fit?

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Richard,

I don’t have any info about a timeline, unfortunately.

Thank you,
Norman

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Hello Again. Can you please check out this article from Tormach. It says that probing with a wired probe is supported:

Probing Techniques for Accurate Machining on your Tormach CNC

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Richard I think you are miss reading that
I believe what their saying is that all the machines including the 1500mx support probing and they offer 3 kinds of probes

Doesn’t really say 1500 supports wired
Ed

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12

I think that it says wireless for 1500MX and wired for the others.

image
image1710Ă—238 48.8 KB

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13

Unfortunately, you are correct :joy:

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14

I thought you may find this of interests. I don’t have a 1500MX to test this with, but it makes sense to me. I have a Centroid KP-3 wired probe. It is a basic probe like a Renishaw that has normally closed contacts. For fun, I asked ChatGPT this question. Check it out:

Richard

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