Weird Mach3 + CSMIO/IP-M Probe Problem

[Neale]

I'm using a CSMIO-IP/M and Mach3 very successfully and probing works beautifully. However, I had a lot of problems when I first started. One secret (well, not so secret as it's described quite a lot but only if you know where to look!) is to upgrade Mach3 to an earlier version. I can't remember now if I'm using .028 or .043. There is s problem with the way that the CSMIO uses some undocumented features of Mach3 which were "fixed" in later versions and promptly broke CSMIO probing.

I have a set of three macros to do simple Z touch-off, touch-off portable plate plus touch-off fixed plate for first tool in multiple operations, and touch-off fixed plate for subsequent operations. Happy to pass these on, although there's nothing very original in them (all based on other people's work but tweaked to use CSMIO firmware probing). They work fine when used during m6 tool change operations, which is where I first started seeing issues myself.

Because of these problems, you have to be careful if you want to use add-on screensets which contain probing macros. I've modified the standard 1024 screenset to add buttons for my macros, but I haven't done anything for XY probing on a regular basis. However, I did use variations of my Z touch-off macro for both X and Y while I was setting up the machine and I know that probing is fine in those axes as well.

You might find this interesting.