Motorized Height Gauge retrofit

I recently acquired a Mahr 600mm motorized height gauge. Long story short it is dead.
I would like to retrofit it with a new/undamaged glass scale and reader head and would like to control the system with linuxcnc.
Has this been done already?

If not, what do you genius's think it would take to do so?

I have in mind a system with a touch screen interface and the same measuring abilities as the original gauge.

There is a long list of measurements the original was able to do, here are a few:

Measure height from above, below, hole diameter, protrusion diameter, distance between plane surfaces, distance between hole centers etc.
I would also like to be able to measure perpendicularity, this would require input from a second touch probe, mounted on the motorized carriage. The system would need to be able to store a lookup table for calibration of the linear scale as well as the ability to calibrate for the second axis as well as be able to null out the non-perpendicularity of the hardware's vertical axis to be able to do perpendicularity measurements.

As I envision the interface, there would be icons on the touch-screen one could tap, to begin specific measurement macros.

Who wants to jump in and build a single axis CNC measurement controller with extra inputs??????

This sounds more like a HAL thing then a linuxcnc thing.
Is Gcode appropriate for programming the moves?

The UI could be made with gladeVCP or Gscreen (depending on whether using pure HAL or linuxcnc)

I am not familiar with the piece of equipment so can't comment much farther.

Chris M

It is one of these, albeit there are dozens of models

I don't have any programming ability. Anyone interested in whipping up a servo control and measurement interface? A new encoder is needed so I can get whatever would be easiest to integrate. The gauge used a small dc motor for drive. What hardware would be needed for a single axis servo system? Is there a possible pc card solutions or even better something one could interface to via a tablet?

usually these measuring devices use force control while measuring.
Once probe is at approximate measurement location motor will start measuring procedure based on the type of measurement function selected.
Mostly these measuring devices use Exposed type linear scale .Enclosed glass scales/scanning head are not recommended because how best you do alignment it will have few micron error due to the scanner head spring mechanism contact with the glass.This is not desirable for measuring equipment.

Again whether the equipment is 1D or 2D.With 1D equipment you need to manually position for each location on height measurement

The original glass scale was damaged....... I will be retrofitting it with a new 20 micron spacing exposed glass scale. The read head is rigidly fixed to the probe carriage of the gauge. I have the option of either quadrature or sine (synchro) output from the scale. Which would be the better option for linuxcnc interpolation of the 20 micron spacing?

I am still in the planning stage so can use whatever. The optimum would be hardware that allows interface via usb / Bluetooth....... I would like to use my lvdt based electronic test indicator as the touch probe.