My $20.00 wireless radio auto z tool

[mattgatten]

I know it's not an entire router but it's a DIY. Mods, please move this if you need to. I apologize in advance.

This is a video of my wireless auto z tool. It took me about 15 minutes to install and test it on my Romaxx HS-1 desktop machine. In my tests, it worked flawlessly 10 times out of 10. You can read about it on my blog.

Wireless Auto Z Article

In the meantime, here is a video of it in action. I'm creating the contact plate tomorrow. Need to get a few parts. Enjoy.

The Video

Thanks,
Matt

[FandZ]

Looks interesting and a good solution. I hope you post back once you get your plate and get it fully usable.

[mattgatten]

I definitely will. This is something that just 'hit me' yesterday afternoon and, after a few tests, I threw together. It initially started because I couldn't get a reliable ground for my current plate and had to fiddle with the wires a bit. I couldn't find my soldering iron or this would be a lot more refined already. In the meantime, I wanted to, at least, get the concept out there. The beauty of it is that it's a really decent and cheap wireless switch that could have many applications.


Thanks,
Matt

[Jay C]

Why is there so much dust in your power supply/interface?

[jp_dt]

Depending on the data encoding of the rf link you may find that there is a delay between when the transmitter sends the "closure" signal and when the receiver outputs the "closure" signal to your driver/interface. I guess if you are jogging slow enough this probably won't have any effect.

Cool idea.

[analogman]

If you ever do metal, the swarf will totally mess up your geckos unless you cover and seal your control box.

[Alex_Cole]

This is an interesting idea. I have quite a bit of camera gear myself and know that these flash slave triggers are able to sync up to speeds of 1/1000th of a sec. Now when you are setting up a tool touch off macro you typically would setup the machine to rapid down to a known Z location. Then you set a slow feed for the rest of the distance when the sensor then becomes active looking for contact.

my machine has roughly 11,000 steps per inch set in Mach 3. Now if I setup the system to use a 3 IPM feed to plunge for the tool setup then I would end up with an error of 0.000005225 possible using this. Now I am no math wiz to correct me if I am wrong. Here is how I came up with this figure.

33,000 steps per min to get 3ipm motion 11,000 x 3

take that and divide by 60 to get steps per sec. 33,000 / 60 = 550 steps per sec.

now take 550 and divide by 1000 (sync speed of trigger) to get possible error 550/1000 = .55

This total of .55 means we have half of one step for possible error.

Now for my machine the resolution is .000095 for 1 step so this would equal 0.00005225 distance error using this trigger.

My mill is very small and setup for very precise milling using servo motors with a small work envelope (6"x5"x4"). The max rapid I have setup on my machine is around 50ipm but can rapid much faster if I wanted to but I am after resolution. For those of you with router machines the required accuracy is much much larger and I think if my math is right then this would be a very viable option. Worth investigating further for sure.

I would love to see this continued as this is interesting to me

AC

[mattgatten]

Sorry for the delay guys.

Accuracy: This is a wood router. I don't think I am as affected by the tolerances as you 'metal guys'.

Dust: I blow it out about once per week. No plans to work with metal on this thing. Yes, I would seal the case, install some type of 'positive airflow' setup, or relocate the electrics to another enclosure. I don't think my PC892 is up to metal, however.

Auto-Z Setup: I'm using a macro that you jog down to a given Z location then start the script. It jogs very slowly until it contacts the plate. I've managed to make something that is 100% reliable (never fails to register contact) but I'm having trouble designing an optimal contact plate. Would anyone care to take a look at what I have so far and help me develope it further?

Right now, it's in 'prototype mode' and has the flash transmitter bolted to an aluminum plate with a ground wire connected to a bolt on my spindle mount. Ideally, the contact plate would contain a switch of some sort so I don't have to manually ground this thing. I'm running out to the shop right now to grab a couple of shots of it. Maybe a video of it running currently and not my father-in-law touching wires together. haha Thanks for the interest in this.

[mattgatten]

Ok, I've took a few more shots and created a video of the tool in action.

You can see it all here: Link