Probing / Digitizing - What the best way to do this job?

[Mad Professor]

Good day all.

Some time ago I asking about Digitizing.

For one of my current project I need to know the bolt hole patten of a gearbox bell housing, so that I can design and make a suitable adaptor plate.

Here is a picture of the gearbox bell housing in quesion.



Sorry about the quick MS Paint drawing .

Does anyone have any Probing / Digitizing scripts that will do this job, or does anyone know how to make Probing / Digitizing scripts?

Or is there a better way of doing this?

Thanks for your time.

Best Regards.

[Jonathan]

If it's just the bolt holes you're after then I would just measure between them with a calliper and add the radius of each hole to get the centre distance. Should be plenty near enough for this.

Could you use the existing one as a template, drill through it and put a bolt through each hole after drilling to stop it wandering.

[stirling]

but if you DO want to have a go via probing there are numerous ways you can do it. A simple way (not the most optimized) is to jog your probe down into the hole roughly in the centre (but doesn't really matter). Probe west, note the X returned - NOT the current position displayed. (in Mach for example the X trip point will be in gcode var 2000 your controller/interpreter may differ). Now probe east, note the X position. G0 or G1 mid way between your recorded points. Now probe north and south and note the Y trip points (in Mach gcode var 2001) then move to the mid point of your recorded Y trips. Voila - your at the centre - or at least as accurately as your probe allows and your holes are circular. The probe command in Mach is G31.