Shapeoko 3 Probe & Limit Switch Kit

[AnonymousPerson]

That's a good idea.

Btw, typo on pg 6. "federate" instead of "feed rate".

[Fablicator]

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Use code BF2015 at checkout to get 10% off your order.

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The sale will run now through end of day Monday.

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[MidCitySlim]

Just want to comment - this kit is plug and play, particularly with the Generic GCode Sender.

Great product. Works flawlessly!

[sjj47]

Wanted to add my feedback also. The kit is perfect - everything went together flawlessly. Well worth the money.

Haven't tried the probe yet because I'm still using Universal G-code Sender, which doesn't support it . I'll give it a try when I upgrade -- maybe to bCNC.

The limit switches seem very consistent. It took me a little while to understand why UGS locked up whenever a switch was triggered, but now I understand a "hard limit" is considered a catastrophic event. You have to reset everything after a catastrophic event because the Arduino may be confused about the spindle location.

One suggestion for other newbies like myself - After you get the limit switches installed, do some experimenting to determine the actual limits of travel in X and Y until just before the limit switches are triggered. Then set the GRBL "soft limit" settings appropriately, e.g.

$130=415.000 (x max travel, mm)
$131=430.000 (y max travel, mm)

The default settings (I assume set by Edward) were too large for my Shapeoko, so the switches were triggered before the soft limits were reached. That sort of defeats the purpose of the soft limits.

[FargoPhil]

For what it's worth, I've been using Universal GCode Sender with a touch probe. I created a macro to probe and set Z with the offset thickness of my touch plate. This works great for setting Z after a tool change.

[grep]

In your manual, you specify to probe using a a G28.2 command. When i do so, i get "error: Unsupported command", in UGS 2.0 with Grbl 0.9.
But when I use G38.2, it works fine...

[Fablicator]

Aha! You found a typo!

Sorry for the confusion!

[MidCitySlim]

For what it's worth, I've been using Universal GCode Sender with a touch probe. I created a macro to probe and set Z with the offset thickness of my touch plate. This works great for setting Z after a tool change.

Can you elaborate on your macro? I'm new to all of this, and it would be beneficial to know how to make one for UGS...

[FargoPhil]

I'll try and get the macro I'm using to you tomorrow, Christmas travels this weekend.

I dug everything out of the forum. This is a good discussion to get you started: http://www.shapeoko.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3618

http://www.shapeoko.com/wiki/index.php/Touch_Plate_v2 This is pretty much the hardware setup I've got. Just a scrap of aluminum with a wire screwed to it. Another wire alligator clipped to the tool, both running to the probe pins on the control board.

[FargoPhil]

UGS lost my settings (My fault, I'm building from source), so I'm looking at my notes. Here's the macros I've got, I'm pretty sure I'm using the second z probe to set work coordinates z 0. The way I've been doing this is find machine home (need limit switches), then set work coordinates. Just jog to xy, use the macro to set xy work 0, then probe for z. The aluminum plate is 3.28mm thick.

Code: Select all

G21; G38.2 Z-25 F1; G92 Z3.28; G91 G0 Z10.0  (z-probe macro)

G21; G38.2 Z-25 F1; G10 P1 L20 Z3.28; G91 G0 Z6.72;  (Probe and set work z)

G10 P1 L20 X0.0 Y0.0  (Set work xy)