I’ve set up my touch probe, but it’s not working when I try to run a carve. One thing I did notice during the probe setup is that the probe contact shows green when it’s NOT touching and red when it is, so this might be reversed somehow.
What I found when I try to run a carve is that the “plug the lead into the carriage” button is grey - not sure how that’s supposed to be sensed, but the probe I’m currently using is plugged directly into the back of the X-Controller so it’s never NOT plugged in. I’ve found if I touch the plate to the bit that button turns green, and then I can click the clip is attached and touch plate is in place buttons, but no probing action takes place and the bottom button says “Separate plate and bit” which I assume means we’ve skipped a step.
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Various screen captures of the probe setup process
The probe setup advanced screen:
Here’s when you select probe when you start a carve:
For the record, I wondered if the failure was the probe being inverted, so I looked and found $6 in the machine inspector and set $6=1 - didn’t help, still fails the same as with $6=0 (the default).
Is the Z-Probe feature only available with the x controller? Will we be able to use easel without the upgrade to use the z probe or are we still only able to use programs such as UGS and Chilipepper?
Thanks Phil…hope you have success. I have a probe set up and wired in. Just waiting for an Easel connection.
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I notice from the screen shots that the setup asks for rail size. But if you have a custom setup, e.g. 1000x1500 there isn’t a way to adjust that. Or am I missing something?
I imagine you will have to manually change your Easel’s size, and your GRBL’s soft limits size after running setup.
Even though I have a 1000x1000mm machine, I change my Easel’s size to 30" x 30". Its cosmetic.
However your GRBL soft limits are not! Definitely change those if they are not correct.
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Hey guys,
Regarding $6, this should be set to $6=0. Note, when changing this value you need to power cycle your controller for the value to take effect (this is a grbl issue I noticed in testing).
As for the “plug the lead into the carriage” step not stepping through, that shouldn’t be happening. Easel is listening for a Low state (no contact) on the probe and should advance straight through. You could try touching the probe together to see if the state change triggers it, but I’ll look through the code and see if theres anything funky going on there.
@StevePrior
On this screen, it looks like you got through all the steps but the bottom button is grayed out. Just to confirm, the probe wasn’t connected at this stage, right? If you try connecting/disconnecting a couple times does that get it un-stuck?
No, that didn’t help, I was stuck with no way of getting out.
I did actually power cycle the X-Controller after changing the $6 setting on the chance that it was required.
Just to make sure I’ve got this straight. You said “Easel is listening for a Low state (no contact) on the probe”. The connections on the X-Controller for probe are between “probe” and “gnd”. So how does a low state mean no contact and tied to ground mean contact? I was going over the possibilities of the pin floating high or low and couldn’t make it work in my head either way with that statement.
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Sorry, my mistake. I meant contact between the probe and puck.
We’re discussing probing more than a meeting of the Christopher Walken fan club…
Just FYI, I poked around in github and there were significant code changes related to probing (and a bunch of other stuff) between the 0.9 and 1.0 branches, but those changes were made upstream in grbl, not by the Inventables folks.
We designed the feature to work with Grbl 1.0c. With 0.9j we can’t see the status of the probe pin (set $10=255 and you’ll see what I mean) at any given time and therefore won’t be able to test the probe’s connection before you do a probe routine. This is important for the x-axis carriage connector because you are plugging it in and unplugging it frequently and we don’t want you to start a probe routine without making sure that connection is good.
Here is the link to the Grbl 1.0c hex file, and here’s the instructions to flash it.
I’ve done a lot of testing today with arduinos on 0.9j and 1.0c, as well as X-Controllers and only been able to replicate the issues in this thread with an arduino on 0.9j or with a $6=1 value. Next I’m going to check OS/browser differences to make sure that isn’t causing the issue.
For the record I was using fully up to date Chrome on a Windows 8.1 laptop.
Google Drive reports that I need permission to get the file.
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Whoops, sorry! Permissions weren’t properly set. The link works now.
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I can’t seem to get my zprobe to show connected with my xcarve
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Try touching the plate to the clip.
Yeah, I had it touching all kinds of things… No change. But only spent a few mins with it as I’m not sure what it does yet (there was nothing about it in the instructions)
I am having all kinds of problems. Two days ago it wouldn’t show up to set it up. Now it will but it is kind of like everything is backwards. If I try to zero my bit even with the probe disconnected it will skip through “plug lead into the carriage”, “attach kip to the collet” and “touch the plate to the bit”. It says there is contact when it isn’t even connected. Then if I do actually connect everything the “start probing” button will only show up if I touch the plate to the bit. If I click this button nothing actually happens. It says probing but nothing moves.Under the advanced set up the green contact button shows up even if it is not connected. When I connect everything and do the test probe sequence it will probe down and stop when it contacts the plate. The green circle will become red and then go back up and return to green again.
Sorry if this is overly detailed, but I am trying to describe the exact scenario I am encountering.
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