Compiling probekins and using probe2stl

I dont have gridprobe in front of me where I can look at it, but it sounds like you need to adjust the Z probe depth in the gcode.
It is probably trying to probe outside of the Z- limits.

I'd recommend smartprobe.ngc it is what I adapted for the routine I use, It is much faster than gridprobe, as it doesnt retract the full safe Z between probe moves.

Also you will need to take out the G1 and axis letters from the log statements. it should only be the coordinates stored in the file.

oh, I left out a step:

?: turn on z correction

I guess it would be 4.1

as for gridprobe I actually rewrote it. There was an issue with the smartgridprode in that it wouldn't reset and it would just get stuck so I took gridprobe and modified it to manage that issue.

Ok, so I see the issue. When using linuxcnc normally, ie. without probekins. I align the tool to the 2 starting edges of the work surface and then press touch off for x/y. Where home would be the limits of the table or work area. what would be the proper process for probekins? If I leave the home to the mins the tool will not touch the surface and it will not probe. so it will just drive into the work area. Also, I thought that by homing the axis it will move any loaded paths to the new home?

I even edited gridprobe to start at 0.1x/y and it didn't change.

here is a pic of the issue:

I even type in the:
G0 X1.01 y1.01 F1600

and it says it wont move there. that it's below the min.

This is the offset from true 0,0:

G1 X1.552 y1.085 F1600

and where I homed the xy axis in linuxcnc. But it wont let coordinates move below that point.???? Why is the move in real space and not in the translated grid space?

I'm not sure what to suggest, but I'll say my order of operations.

1. turn on machine and home all axes
2. switch to world mode
3. clear all offsets of current coordinate system
4. jog to lower left corner of surface to probe
5. probe to surface and set Z=0 for current coordinate system
6. run probing routine (should return to start position after finished)
7. convert to stl and load into memory
8. turn on probekins z correction (still at start position which should have no offset because probe was zeroed there)
9. load file I want to cut
10. swap to cutting bit
11. touch off X and Y if necessary and touch off Z
12. run code.

Yeah, the issue was in the order in which I was doing things.

Home all the axes then switch to world mode. Then touch off the work piece.

Now that I have that down, I need to work the process from the beginning. I.e. pcb layout forward, because some things have changed.

I'll post how it goes.

Oh, and once in world mode I can't jog, use the arrow keys. It's like dumb or something, so I guess I have to use gcode commands to move it around. Seems to work that way.

Not sure if you caught it the first time I said it, don't touch off X or Y before you do the probing. The coordinates it stores need to be machine coordinates.
If you set your pcb corner to 0,0 then when you turn on probekins it will offset the machine 0,0 and not your pcb 0,0.

also it may not matter if you jog in world mode, I havent noticed any ill effects when I forget to switch before jogging.
Not sure why you cant jog though.

ok, I followed your steps and I end up with the tool about 3-4 mm off the pcb surface. So, I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. But it is following the surface. Z is moving ever so slightly as it follows the cut paths.

It's like the translated Z is causing an offset. i.e. so when I ran it before and it was cutting the surface. I somehow wasn't getting the translated z values into memory. Now that I have them in memory the translated values are above the surface. but I'm just guessing. maybe I'll look into the code and figure it out...?