Cheap home made Touch Probe.

[mikegasman]

here’s my home made probe wanted something to play with but with out the cost.
It’s made out of MDF water pipe pan head screws springs wire connecters.
Works ok for what it is.

[truman]

Hi I was just wondering if you could explain how this works the probe I meen this is really interesting

thank you

[mikegasman]

Here’s some more pics let me know if you need more or what you want to know about it.

[teebee]

Are You using it only verticaly? I mean when probing, do you only go to the probed part from top and measure the vertical coordinate when one of the contacts is opend, or are You running the probe along the part?
How does it behave on skew surfaces? What is the raster used for probing the wrench???

I know.. tonns of questions, but this is a realy interesting project. Congratulations, looks realy impressing to me.

[truman]

those are great pictures what software are you using with this setup

[mikegasman]

I use mach3 to run the probe and my machine. The digitizing wizard in mach3 works good
when probing the writing on the wrench it comes down in the z axes and records the position
that’s all I’ve done with it so fare it will activate going in the XYZ position.
Was just sharing what I made with every one who mite want to play with a probe but don’t have the money for it or the time to make a fancy one.

[paulC]

Brilliant. There I was thinking about using PC board and bearings.
Will use your design just replacing mdf with plastic.
Thanks
Paul

[toneV8]

Also home made Touch Probe.

http://www.indoor.flyer.co.uk/probe.htm

[chronon1]

It looks like you made 10 passes to get that crude image - but its not bad considering it came off the side of that monkey wrench .... And that's pretty fine lettering .. probably most uses of your probe will be on larger scale and will give you better ...

I don't know what the purpose of this thing is other than to make an image .. it seems like rather crude type of 'scanner' like a paper scanner (2D) but it's a 3D scanner - so mach3 gives you that image and then you can recreate it ... So it's for scanning in something ot get a rough plot which you can then mill and produce something almost as good as the original .. ?

[turmite]

chronon1, these type probes can be used to pick up the edges of a part, fnd the center of a hole or scan a part in 3d giving a point cloud that can then be manipulated into a full 3d image so a gcode program can then be made from that. Reverse engineering is the largest use for these type probes.

Mike

[chronon1]

Sounds pretty cool - beets starting from scratch each time .. ill bet china nad japan have a whole lot of these probes, in fact i'll bet anytime something new comes out, the SOP in a Chinese plant is to get the good ole probe out and begin pumping widgets !
(Hope not too many Chinese are reading this , if so , don't take too much offense, I lost my IT job recently to Bangalore India--- )

When you say point cloud and manipulating it .. is that something Mach does or you have to go in manually and have fun line by line ?

[sendkeys]

chronon some of the best point cloud software is made in china i wonder why :P hehe Saw the new solidworks2007 going to have point cloud support
http://files.solidworks.com/News/scanTo3D/scanTo3D.html