Thank you Ray
Something is moving on Mach 3 screen on my home PC - without the router. Now I go to try it with my router.
I`m a metric user, and I saw you wrote something about inches - do I have to modify something, somewhere?
This PCB I use or a piece of a metal pipe as the Z zero and edge finder tool - is it enough to conect it to port 15 and have some wire connected to GND and my router bit, and mark it as a Probe in config menu?
Adam
Adam,
You do need to set Mach3 to operate in metric, but it has no effect on the macros - they use whatever units Mach is using.
For the tool length setting, all you need is a piece of PCB material with a wire soldered to the top side, and connected to the PROBE input of your BOB. You *might* need to put a pull-up resistor on the BOB end of the wire, if the BOB does not already have pullups. The tool will be grounded, so when it touches the plate, the PROBE input gets yanked low.
For edge finding, you can use the same piece of PCB material, slipped in between the tool and the part, but in that case you'd need to set the "probe diameter" DRO to the radius of the tool plus the thickness of the PCB material. This will work fine, but will sometimes be hard to get the PCB material in the right position to get an accurate reading. I use a Fowler electronic edge finder (about $30 from Enco, etc. - see Enco P/N 307-3436) that I've modified by removing the "guts", and connecting a wire to the probe tip. I made the wire short (about 6"), and put an alligator clip on it. I have the piece of PCB material permannently connect to my probe input. When I use the edge finder, I just clip the alligator clip to the piece of PCB and go to work.
Regards,
Ray L.