smartprobe - configuration questions

First time trying to digitize with a probe and I'm having trouble deciphering smartprobe.ngc - if I knew what a few more lines mean then I'm sure I can get it to work for me. (trying to scan a dime superglued to a 1" square piece of aluminum).

I figured out the X/Y stuff but I'm having trouble with the Z. I set safe-Z at .25, and left the Z-probe at -.1 and I zero off the work table, bottom left corner. Router goes up to Z0.25, goes over to X0Y0 and starts probing. After each probe it only lifts up a little before moving over to the next point. When it hits the end of the first line it goes up to safe-Z, moves up to the next line, drops down and starts again.

My problem comes when it hits the edge of the dime. It's not lifting enough after each probe to clear the lip of the dime, so it slams into the side and trips the probe and I get the error message about probe already being tripped. So I guess what I really need to know is - what does"Z-probe -.1" mean exactly - move -.1 from somewhere, go to -.1? And how do I program it to lift high enough to clear the edge of the object? And any chance there's a text file out there somewhere with a # comment next to each line explaining in detail what it does?

thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

Thanks. My copy does have a feedrate - it's up top right below the G20/G21 setting.
I've already gone through it and figured out what I "thought' it should be doing. Most of the code format is the same as python so it was just a matter of finding g-code specifics. But I still don't know why it's acting that way - tripping instead of lifting up high enough.

O4 while [#5070 NE 0] (as long as the probe has not failed to close)
G38.5 z#7 (lift the probe up off the work, stop when you lose contact or hit Safe-Z, whichever comes first.)
G38.3 x#11 (drop the probe, stop on contact)

That little bit seems to be the difference between smartprobe and gridprobe, so if I can't figure it out I'll probably just run gridprobe. It's a hobby so the extra probing time won't kill me.

Can't wait to here more on this. I just bought a probe and am attempting to use smart probe to scan some toy parts I made out of wood. I'm hoping to use smartprobe to write the g-code so I can duplicate my parts and make multiple toys at one time on the cnc instead of cutting them out one at a time. I have not tried gridprobe as the description sounded like smartprobe was the better of the two my not be true.

Depending on what your trying to accomplish with replicating your parts, for simple 2-D and 2.5-D milling and carving. I've had pretty good luck just taking a a decent photo of something, vectoring the image, then scaling it to a known dimension.

That obviously won't work as well for getting a 3-D relief.

Did this ever get figured out? It has been awhile since I have been on this thread. I also have not been able to play much but I did decide to try a part today and the same trouble. Todd's response works fine but I was hoping to use my now old toy.

Not by me. It kept crashing on the side of the dime no matter what I tried until I just gave up. The other posters may have had better results.

Hey guys,
A different Joe here with the same or very similar problem, When I try to use smartprobe.ngc, it starts probing fine but inevitably, I get a "probe is already tripped" error. It mostly occurs in the same place but sometimes it'll go for a while before it throws the error.

I found a reply from a while back where someone suggested adding "debounce" to the HAL file but I can't figure out how and I'm not sure that will help my problem.

Forgive my ignorance but would it help to modify smartprobe.ngc to raise the Z another fraction after the probe loses contact with the object? If so, how?

I can use gridprobe.ngc but it is painfully slow, I'm just looking for a better way.

Any help is appreciated,

Thanks
Joe

I found the answers I was looking for and am adding it here to help others that may also have this problem.
I found that someone had already solved this problem by modifying smartprobe.ngc to Probe-on-Steroids.ngc but I kept getting a different error when running it. I simply copied 2 lines from Probe-on-Steroids.ngc and pasted into smartprobe.ngc and it worked great!
Copy the following

G91 G01 Z0.2 (Lines added to the SmartProbe.ngc)
G90 (Lines added to the SmartProbe.ngc)

paste these between lines G38.5 Z#7
and
G38.3 X#11
Change the Z.02 to indicate the added distance you wish Z to travel after the probe loses contact.

I hope this helps
Joe