Autoleveller or any other template reader and surface digitizer

[peter_tash]

Hi my fellow CNC enthusiasts!
I am very happy to have a question, because I always get great Ideas from the people here in this forum!

So... It is been a while since I use autoleveller from Autoleveller – CNC Millings, Levelled . I use it mainly to scan uneven surface and engrave on it with the levelled code from the program. It is great piece of software.
I just want to say thank you to James for his effort.

I use it both with UCCNC and Mach3. But there is a catch. For the older setups with BOB on a XP machine is very hard to find a working version of java. And even if you do, it sometimes crashes. Maybe because of the java.
There is another thing and that is the lack of the option to exclude points, like if you need to "scan" a different shape from a rectangle. I mean you can scan a circle but you have to wait for the whole process of the probe going around all the point in a square that the software makes. I am not complaining! For a free software is great!

There is also some pieces that for some reason create probed file that the software crashes when you load the point cloud. No mater if you probed 9 points or 100 points. Do not know the reason for this. Tried a lot of different approaches, but there are jobs that refuse to get probed... Maybe is because of the java, or something from my side. Do not know.

I will not lie to you, I use my machines for commercial purposes. And I would like to find a software or plugin that is more professional. I am wiling to pay to have more reliable and up-to-date tool.

Now I have bought a probe that can read X Y and Z. So I can now use it as edge finder and template reader, but again I want to use it to probe the surface of my jobs and adapt the toolpaths to this "scanned" surface, just I use to do with autoleveller.

So again shoutout to James for the great software, but I need some alternative.

My question is, what that alternative can be? For Mach3 and for UCCNC? I use them both on different machines, because I like them both....

Thank you all and I wish you good health in those crazy times...

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[ZASto]

Try: https://www.scorchworks.com/Gcoderip...oderipper.html
As to my knowledge it does not use Java

[peter_tash]

In the past, I tried g-code ripper. I think that it is an easy to get use to - software. It works for surface scanning and adapting the toolpath to this surface. But from my experience, It uses only G1 and it turns all the arcs in to series of lines and the machine does some crazy stuff. Maybe it was some mistake made by my when I am setting it up. I will try it again and see how it feels and works. Maybe need to spend more time on it. But again it wants to probe in a rectangle, without excluding the unnecessary points, like if you want to scan a circle. Or again maybe I did not use it properly... will see.
Does anyone have some opinion on "Probe-It" by "Crafty CNC" ? There is something about automatic 2.5 perimeter tracing (for outline tracing) and some feature called "single line surface profile trace in X/Z plane routine. Is it useful?
Are my possibilities limited or is it just me that cannot find the best piece of software or plugins to do what I want to do? Or do I miss to explain what I want?

[peter_tash]

Ok. Form what I see there are tons of touch probes in the network. Especially in places like ebay. There are a lot of them that work with mach 3, but I don't see any software associated with the surface scanning or the contour template vectorization.

[ger21]

UCCNC comes with an Autoleveler plugin.

[peter_tash]

UCCNC comes with an Autoleveler plugin.

Hi Gerry. Thank you for the idea. I have tried in the past one plugin for UCCNC that was also named autoleveler. But unfortunately I never got it running. I Have tried a few different versions and did not manage to do anything with it.
This is where I downloaded it:
https://www.cnczone.com/forums/uccnc...n-uccnc-6.html
I just saw there is newer version that I haven't yet tried.
Tomorrow I will give it a try!

[joeavaerage]

Hi,

So again shoutout to James for the great software, but I need some alternative.

I use Autoleveler extensively and have done so for five years because I make one off design circuit boards. It is a great program.

My machine is run by Mach4 running on a low power 32 bit Windows 7 Embedded PC with an Ethernet SmoothStepper. I have never really sort an alternative
as Autoleveller does such a good job.

Several months ago, in fact nearly a year or so, Mach4 added a mcSurface plugin. What it does is probe the bed of your mill and record the probe data much like
Autoleveller. What Mach then does is modify ALL Gcode that runs on the machine so that it follows the subtle Z variations across the bed.
Of course Autoleveller does the same thing but you have to direct Autoleveller specifically modify each and every Gcode file you want to run whereas
mcSurface does it automatically (when enabled) to every file without any intervention on your part.

mcSurface may not be particularly useful in that it was intended that you would probe the bed only infrequently but apply corrections to all files that run.
I suspect the mcSurface probe interface/dialogue box is rather too clunky and slow for repeated and frequent use.

I believe however that the mcSurface Lua source code is published and you might modify it for you own purposes.
Lua is a lightweight but remarkably powerful, fast and flexible (self memory managed) scripting language and may be an easier
proposition than Java which is tightly typed and has a strict, even restrictive, syntax.

Craig

[peter_tash]

Hi,



I use Autoleveler extensively and have done so for five years because I make one off design circuit boards. It is a great program.



Craig

I agree with you that it is a great program. The reason I am searching for an alternative is the fact that it some cases it I scan the surface of the material and when I try to open the RPF the software freezes. Sometimes it takes 2-3 minutes and loads the PROBE(RPF) screen, but in some cases it freezes for eternity... And I am probing just on 9 to 15 points. Still cannot find the reason for this. I even scan the same surface with different offsets and with different point spacing and I always get the same result on the same project. Very strange. From what I saw I thing it happens mainly on projects with minor surface differences.
However, the fact that there is no exclusion of points option is very frustrating, but from what I seen so far, I cannot exclude unnecessary point in g-code ripper, and also I cannot do it in the autoleveler plugin for UCCNC (cannot say the version because I have a problem with the pc wired to the machine, I will write which version is installed tomorrow).
I wonder if James can go commercial and get paid for the software, so he can make some updates and improvements,,, Anyone knows him personally?

About Mach4, I don't know why I feel so far away from this controller. I am really happy with Mach3 and UCCNC. Maybe I have to try it but I feel very unconfident about this... Otherwise this function for surface mapping is very ok for me. I am also sure that Mach4 will have some template reader for contour vectorization and edge finder and etc.

I am still wondering how is possible to not have a paid software or plugin for Mach3 and UCCNC that is mainly focused on probing... I mean all about surface scanning, contour vectorization, like copy software. You know to put something on the machine and copy it, and work on that copy. Accurately.

Anyway. I appreciate everybody's help! It makes me happy that somebody is wasting his time just to help a fellow enthusiast.