Probe for corner

Here is another untested sub that I am trying on my mill. You need to have a tested and working probe to try.
You will need to edit it for your own testing.
On my mill I use one or two vises or no vise at all depending on the work piece. I regularly move my vise to new locations.
In order to reduce the setup time I use a probe.
With this sub you should be able to find the corner and top of work or the left rear jaw of a vise.

It starts by probing Y edge then searches by search increment in the negative direction for end of target along X axis till it finds end or search maximum.
After finding end of target probes for the X edge.
After finding both the X and Y will travel to the specified location and set Z.

To save time the probes are done at a high speed then repeated at a slow speed to be as accurate as possible.
X and Y when found are set at 1/2 the diameter of the probe and the correction number you enter to fine tune it.
The probe then travels to the specified XY location to probe and set Z.
This is a very long version for debugging with many comments, MSGs, pauses, etc.
As this was written to run automatically most moves are made with G38.n to protect probe and alert operator and if there was a problem where it was.
This version use G92 to set the coordinates, G91 Incremental mode for most moves and on completion or error returns to G90 Absolute mode.

To test this install your probe, make sure it is working and jog to a position close to the end of your target. Lower Z so that X and Y moves will encounter the target and go.
You will want to modify this for your use such as finding the right front jaw of the vise instead of the left rear of the vise and strip out the extra lines.

Rick G

So this finds an outside corner of the vise jaw or material

As the rear jaw of my vise is stationary when I need to design a new part in CAD I set the top left corner of the part as X0Y0. That way if the corner of the vise is probed and set I can load one blank after another by just aligning the blank with the corner.

If I am not going to use a vise I set the X0Y0 of the part as the lower left of the material and probe the part.

I think HAAS has one that will find the center of a block of material by going all the way around

I had not thought of that, but I could probably modify the sub to do that if there was interest, I assume the blank would be a square or rectangle?

Rick G

John,

As luck would have it the very next part I needed to work on my mill was round.
So started the CAD / CAM job from the center of the material.

I think HAAS has one that will find the center of a block of material by going all the way around or something like that...

I wrote another sub to find the center of the material, looks like it should work on both rectangles and circles.
I will post it later.

Rick G

I've been using the subroutine and it's great! There are a couple of improvements I would like to suggest:
1. the move after finding the y edge should be on a diagonal rather than first X, then Y.
2. The Z touch off is great, but since tool length compensation(G40) has been toggled off, I have to then load the tool length for the probe (G43) manually.

I'll try to do the edits myself and repost them. Thanks again for setting this up to begin with.
Hahn Rossman
www.alkifoundry.com

hahn_rossman wrote:

I've been using the subroutine and it's great! There are a couple of improvements I would like to suggest:
1. the move after finding the y edge should be on a diagonal rather than first X, then Y.
2. The Z touch off is great, but since tool length compensation(G40) (G49) has been toggled off, I have to then load the tool length for the probe (G43) manually.

I'll try to do the edits myself and repost them. Thanks again for setting this up to begin with.
Hahn Rossman
www.alkifoundry.com

Glad you are having some fun with it. edit, test, improve for a better mouse trap.

Rick G

I'm unable to get this to work, and I think I'm not understanding something here. FYI, I'm running a Tormach with a touch probe that works properly (I can do g38.x moves in MDI and it works as expected). I have my probe positioned so that the first Y move will make contact with the workpiece. When it does, it halts with an error message "Probe not complete unexpected Y hit on retract." I'm reading the source but it's not clear to me why this is happening. Would also be great if anyone could expand just a tiny bit on the parameters--I am trying to run this using the defaults as they look vaguely right... Thanks!