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  1. #1
    I have been making a few different jobs over the last couple or 3 weeks and nearly every one of them involves manually changing tools. This was getting to be a pain in the arse so decided to make something to make life easier.

    It took me about an hour to make using a bit of engineering plastic, a bit of steel which I had lying around and a spring, after using it I realized I should have made one a long time ago. Changing tools now is a piece of p**s.! I put the spring in to give the probe a little bit of movement in case the machine overtravels slightly, this way it does not damage the tool when setting.

    I have attached the drawing, photo of it and the script which I took from the Mach3 website and modified the code to suit my machine. The code is not 100% compatible with everyone's machine as each machine is different so be warned.. the reason why I had to edit it was when running the original code the machine wanted to come down and touch on the probe, stop and then rapid down into the table, nice... This was mainly down to the fact that I do not have any home switch's on my machine which is one of the jobs I will get round to one day, not really needed them but can definitely see the advantage in having them. Anyway, I changed the code to get round this and now it works fine.

    The probe is wired into the controller using a single core wire, any size wire within reason will do, I used a length of 0.75mm. Once you wire it in setup mach so that the input you have wired it to is associated with the digitize function. The input configuration can be found in the can be found in the 'Config', 'Ports and Pins', 'Input signals' section in Mach3. You may have to play with the active low setting to get it to work, just depends how your inputs are wired. Mine is set to active low ON, the default is off.

    The method for using the probe is as follows -


    1 - Set your x and y offsets on the job.
    2 - Set tool to tool 0 - this is where the Z0 offset for the job is stored
    3 - Jog the tool (any tool) over the job.
    4 - Jog the z axis down to where you want Z0 to be, this will vary depending on how you have programmed the job.
    5 - Hit the 'Zero Z' button just in the same way that you would normally set the z offset.
    6 - Put the tool height setting probe (THSP) on the bed of the machine (NOT on the top of the job), it could be fixed to the bed in a specific position if required.
    7 - Jog the machine over the THSP and jog down so that the tool is about 20mm away from the THSP.
    8 - Double check that mach3 is set to tool 0 and hit the 'Auto tool zero' button (once you have put the script in which I have attached!)
    9 - The tool will feed down until it touch's the probe, it will then rapid up away from the probe. Mach now knows where the top of the job is in relation to the table and stores the offset.
    10 - Run the first tool for the job.
    11 - Tool change - Manually change the tool to the next one in the program and jog the machine so that it is over the THSP and around 20mm above it.
    12 - Make sure that Mach3 is now NOT set to tool 0, at this stage it needs to be T1, T2, T3 etc ** Important note - make sure that all of your tool offsets are set to 0, the script does not use the tool offset values but if your program uses them and you have a value of anything other than 0 in then it will probably end up either scrapping the job or crashing the machine. Just set them all to 0...!
    13 - Hit the 'Auto tool zero' button in Mach, the machine now jogs down and touch's the new tool on the THSP then rapids away.
    14 - What the script does is now look at the difference between the first tool which you used and the current one, it then adjusts the z offset height on the machine.
    15 - Change tools as many times as you like using the same method.

    I did try to write the script and make it store the values in the tool offset table but this proved too complicated and is not required, when manually changing tools then all you are interested in is the difference in height between the first tool and the current one and this is what the script does.

    Best thing I have made in a while...

    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	Tool Height Setting Probe.jpg 
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    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	SM Tool Setter Probe 3D.pdf 
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    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	SM Tool Setter Probe.pdf 
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    Tool Height Set Script.zip

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