Work with probe

My Vers PR Rev0.6 Probe arrived this week.  I wired up the second PP DB25-15 pin as the Probe input and with the HAL meter confirmed that it goes TRUE when the probe is activated.

There are, what I would call, major issues with the versaprobe screen that I think need to be addressed.  There's a misrepresentation of the system units on the screen.  The jog buttons and the distance to jog say inches.  The defaults for probing distances are all in millimeters.  My machine is in inches.  I can change the display units from inches to mm and that works but the jog distances don't change and I believe they should.  I can issue a G21 and now theoretically I have a metric machine.

But in order to make the probe reach the correct location I still have to set the probe diameter to 0.0785" except only 3 decimals are allowed or accepted and so it's set to 0.078". 

Changing the distance values is non-intuitive.  A tab from that entry leaves say 0.2 but doesn't change anything.  A CR must be entered to change it which then goes from say 0.2 to 0.200.    A tab therefore should restore it to what it was to show it wasn't changed.    Not only that put the mouse cursor onto one of the entry fields and click and nothing happens. If the MDI screen is active the cursor stays in the MDI field.   But now the arrow keys on the keyboard increment/decrement the amount in that field by 1.000 increments.  And the keyboard can change the values.

I believe that once the the spin box is clicked it should either change colour or the field should be highlighted in some way.  If the tab key is allowed to leave the box then either the value reverts or is accepted in same way as the CR.  An ESC should also leave the box and revert the value.

It would be nice if there was a way to set the XY values to 0 automatically after this although that would have to be optional too or it couldn't be used to measure length. 
Anyway, it appears to be working.

John
 

I think that a lot of what you describe is the Glade entry field behaviour, and is not especially easy to fix.

As for your perverse desire to machine in furlongs and cubits...

I suspect that the original author started off coding for his own use and so imperial measurements were not considered at an early enough stage to make it seamless.

The pragmatic approach is probably to edit the underlying files. The Glade UI is controlled by a human-readable XML file, that can be directly edited to increase decimal places and hard-coded jog behaviour is probably set by entries in a Python handler.

Thanks Andy. Although you have the units incorrect I'm afraid. It's furlongs per fortnight.

I've not made it (slowly) through all 50 pages or so of postings on this subject. I did at least figure out why my Z axis was doing an operation twice.

I'll look into the coding to see if I can't make the diameter of the probe tip more accurate. I do like Serguei's probe. For the standard 3 arm type it's well built. Unlike some of the more expensive commercial ones though the probe isn't super long. It tapers in and then out against after the ball. Setting the correct height above the work before probing is important or the side of the probe hits rather than the ball.

And I do understand that at a certain point he really just wanted to get on with building things rather than writing software. And possibly EMC even got in the way of making something better.

However, overall, his touch screen is an impressive bit of work.
Not important if trying to find a center but critical if just finding two edges since the step over of half ball diameter might then be wrong.

Hi everyone,

I managed to be get my probe and toolsetter working in LCNC and can measure XY edges and Z via Probescreen V2. However, I can't get the manual tool change routine to start. Every time I hit the TS button in ProbescreenV2, I get a "#<_ini[axis_2]max_limit> not define" error. I attach my .ini and .hal. I hope someone can spot the issue.

Thanks!

 

Check my message
forum.linuxcnc.org/49-basic-configuratio...obe?start=490#224431

I had issues with manual tool change not working. Go a bit further and I also posted how I got rid of the double up down at the tool change position. I'm no longer having issues with manual tool change.

However I haven't tried it from the probe screen.  I'm using the Tx M6 G43 commands in the G code or just entering that command as a single line.
 

jcdammeyer,
which screen gui are you using? dragon? dragon_hd? or something custom? and which probe gui? basic or versa?

I'm trying to get probing and tool setting working in a slightly modified dragon (just enlarged to fit my screen) using a Tormach probe which is similar to the vers probe you just acquired.
I've run versa probe version 1 in axis for years and like it.

and the instructions are less than clear......