Seeking: Non-conductive touch probe for auto leveling - SO3

[woodworkerbob]

Been trying to do some engraving and have found my waste board and/or the working material is not flat enough. I work with wood and plastic so the PCB conductive probes won't work for me. Yea I could stretch some aluminum foil over the working material, but I'm not sure that would work all that well. I have used the AL foil trick on some non-SO3 CNC equipment to set Z=0.0, that works great!

Any suggestions?
Bob

[WillAdams]

Build or buy one?

Linked from: http://www.shapeoko.com/wiki/index.php/ ... ouch_Plate
https://www.youmagine.com/designs/touch ... digitizing

There are a few more at: http://www.shapeoko.com/wiki/index.php/Touch_Plate#DIY

as well as at: http://www.shapeoko.com/wiki/index.php/ ... view#Other

Guess we need a Touch Probe page as well, and we need to find the time to clean up that sort of thing....

William

[woodworkerbob]

Build or buy one?

Probably buy. I was hoping for a less than $100 unit. I don't have access to a 3D printer (yet) so building can be more difficult.

Thanks for the info. I will continue the search as well.

Bob

[WillAdams]

I'm pretty sure at least one of the designs was suited for milling.

[AnonymousPerson]

Hmmm, this seems like an approach that doesn't need a 3D printer:

http://www.instructables.com/id/digitiz ... nc-router/

It would definitely be easier to buy something "already made and known to work" though.

[woodworkerbob]

Hmmm, this seems like an approach that doesn't need a 3D printer:

http://www.instructables.com/id/digitiz ... nc-router/

It would definitely be easier to buy something "already made and known to work" though.

Pretty nice. It seems like instructables wants me to join, with fee, to down load the PDF of the design. From the pictures is should be possible to build.

I'm getting lazy and would prefer the "made and working" variety. There's a lot of difference between "should work" and "does work".

Bob

[AnonymousPerson]

It seems like instructables wants me to join, with fee, to down load the PDF of the design.

Ugh. I'd not noticed them doing that before.

[RoguePirin]

If you don't want to pay for Instructables, you might like the probe design here. Look for the PDF instructions separately from the design files.

[JuKu]

https://miscsolutions.wordpress.com/min ... sor-board/

[woodworkerbob]

https://miscsolutions.wordpress.com/min ... sor-board/

This looks way cool. Plus it doesn't look too expensive. I wonder if the IR would reflect off MDF, plywood. Anybody know?

Bob