PP 2.0.0 working great as is my $109.00 ETS.

[kstrauss]

Thanks! That is about what I had planned but was concerned that additional support might be necessary. My spindle is somewhat smaller than yours so no reason to bother converting; I can easily redraw.

[Fenichel]

Both my probe and my ETS are NC so I'm happy. .

I think I have just got the same ETS as you (sold as a SHINA SK-66; touch connection red & orange, NC; overtravel connection blue & green, NC; puffer present), but my 770 is ignoring it.

Sitting on my desk, the NC touch connection has a resistance of about 1 ohm untouched, off the scale (>66M) touched.

The supply voltages at the DIN-5 connector on my Tormach are at nominal values. With nothing connected, the voltage at the sense pin is +2.9 VDC. My touch probe (one of Cliff Hall's impact-tolerant probes) works fine connected here.

When I connect the ETS to the 770, with the red wire connected to either the +12 VDC supply (pin 3) or the +5 VDC supply (pin 1) and the orange wire connected to the sensing input (pin 5), the voltage at the sensing input is the same as that of the red wire untouched and +2.7 VDC touched.

My guess is that +2.7 VDC is too high, and that all might be well if I just threw a pull-down resistor into the circuit. I haven't tried this yet. Has anyone else had a similar problem with this ETS?

[kstrauss]

Shouldn't the ETS wires go to ground (pin 4 in the DIN5) and input (pin 5 in the DIN5)? I believe that the Tormach has a pullup resistor between +5 volt and the input pin. Search for PN 31039 in your Tormach Operator Manual for a schematic.

[Zetopan]

When I connect the ETS to the 770, with the red wire connected to either the +12 VDC supply (pin 3) or the +5 VDC supply (pin 1) and the orange wire connected to the sensing input (pin 5), the voltage at the sensing input is the same as that of the red wire untouched and +2.7 VDC touched.

Yikes! The probe wires should connect between the input sense and GROUND! The input has a pull-up resistor to +5VDC and the input is expecting to see a signal change between 5VDC and zero volts, in whatever direction your mill is set up for (positive for some and negative for others, mine is set up for positive which is an open circuit when my Renishaw probe contacts something).

[Fenichel]

Yes, of course. How could I have done that? Stay tuned to this channel for more bonehead adventures.

[MFchief]

So, sorry for going back to this thread again, but.......

I did get my ETS working and it seems to be very repeatable between activation's with the same tool in the spindle, but I was a little disappointed in the overall accuracy. In the 2-4" range where most of my tooling lives. I was getting a consistent error (long ) of around 1
to 1 and 1/2 thou. This was in comparison to my Fowler mechanical height gauge, which is pretty much dead on in this range with gauge blocks.

So I confirmed this error on the mill by setting gauge blocks on top of the ETS and doing a set tool length probe. I then adjusted the probe height setting on the machine to 0.0014 higher than the measured size. I had set the size using the procedure outlined by Entirely Crimson in his first video with the 1-2-3 block.

So the adjustment to the height setting gives me good tool lengths, to within just a few tenth's.

But the reason for this post is to ask everyone if I'm fooling myself here or is this a good idea?

RSDI, you mentioned earlier that the top of the ETS is threaded on, then held by a set screw. Is it possible this could be an adjustment to accomplish what I'm trying to do by massaging the height setting?

Terry

[kstrauss]

Why not use the procedure shown in ? With this approach you don't need to be concerned with the height of your ETS.

[MFchief]

Hi Kstrauss,

Actually I have done it that way also, but the results for me were the same with both strategies, so I just mentioned the one to not be too long-winded. LoL
Terry

[kstrauss]

Following up on RDSI's comments:
Is it possible that when measuring an actual tool it is near the centre of the top while with the spindle it is pressing on the edge of the top? I solved this problem with mine by making a spindle probe with a ball at the end. I carefully measured this "probe" and use it rather than the actual spindle. I wrote a little piece of gcode to automate the setup of tools. It first trips the ETS with my "probe" and then measures the actual tool and sets the tool table entry appropriately.

[MFchief]

I haven't disassembled the ETS yet to check on the possible looseness, and I haven't yet checked the parallelism of the top to the base.

I have been mindful of the possibility of that contributing to the error's I've seen. I did all of my checks with tools that had fairly small diameter's, 0.25" or less, and was careful to center the tool's over the ETS top.

When I set the tool length of the spindle nose in the beginning, I centered the forward most edge of the spindle in X and Y over the ETS. When using the gauge blocks, I centered them on the ETS as well.

I'm not sure which part of my description was the most unclear, (maybe all of it-LoL), but I am attaching pics of the ETS with a gauge block sitting on it the way is was when I simulated setting the length of a fictitious tool. Numer 1 is as tested, number 2 is just a perspective view of the block.

I haven't been able to get into the shop today, but my plan going forward is to first do the disassembly check then the parallelism check, then grind if necessary.

Terry

[jttoner]

I just picked up what appears to be the same ETS. Mine has four wires and no instructions. Which pair should use?

[kstrauss]

One further thought is the surface on the top. Mine is definitely not carbide and now shows small indentations from contact with the tools. These indentations are a thou or more deep and could affect measuring tool lengths but not be detected by the large surface area of gauge blocks.

[Fenichel]

If it is the same as mine, the wires are red, orange, blue, & green. The red & orange wires make up a normally-open circuit, closed when the device is touched. The blue green wires are another NO circuit, closed only when the device is pushed down almost to its limit.

The red/orange pair is the one you want. The blue/green pair is meant for some sort of alarm or emergency-stop use.

[MFchief]

So, I think I'm pretty much at the end of this saga.

Did some checks with a 3.5" long 0.25" end mill and found a length variance when moving the tool in X or Y + - 0.25" from the center of the ETS of 0.0007" in X and 0.0011" in Y. That's total X and Y movement, not from the center, so actually not all that bad, since from center to edge was 0.0006" worst case.

But I went ahead and took the top off because of what RSDI said about reports of loose tops, I didn't find it to be loose on my unit, but was a little surprised about the inside appearance. The center was filled with some kind of soft black material that made me think of what we used to call potting compound.

When I made the sub base for the ETS, I did try to make the top and bottom as parallel as I could on the Tormach, but the question was still there, was it truly parallel? I decided to emulate RSDI and grind the top.. I first stoned the bottom of the base with a diamond stone, then I took it to the grinder. I had embedded three small RE magnets in the base, so setting it up on the grinder with the base installed insured the results would be parallel. I was a little surprise when the first pass on the grinder only touched about half of the top in Y. But I was encouraged because the difference matched the direction of the differences in length I was seeing in the test mentioned earlier. It didn't take long to finish off the top, which by the way, is carbide on my unit as well.

When back on the mill, I reran the test I started this post with, and my largest variance was around 2 tenth's, which I'm calling good.

Again, my thanks to everyone who helped with this issue!

Terry

[jttoner]

If it is the same as mine, the wires are red, orange, blue, & green. The red & orange wires make up a normally-open circuit, closed when the device is touched. The blue green wires are another NO circuit, closed only when the device is pushed down almost to its limit.

The red/orange pair is the one you want. The blue/green pair is meant for some sort of alarm or emergency-stop use.

Thanks, greatly appreciated.