Today I had some students wanting to engrave some images onto jarrah. They were going to create drink coasters. We went through the process of setting it up using the Z probe. The machine identified when it was touched onto the bit but no matter what we tried as soon as we took it away , it seemed to disconnect from the probe so then we couldn’t set the height by the machine moving down to touch the plate. We gave up and then tried a 1/16 fishtail bit and this connected easily. We obviously didn’t get the fine engraving we wanted. Is there something that needed to be done that we missed out on?
Sounds like you didn’t have a good connection either when plugging in the probe or when you connected it to the collet? What type of bit did you have in the router when you had the issue?
Solid Carbide Single Flute Engraving Bit ???
I have had this same result on cheap Chinese bits that I got off of Amazon. Not sure what the issue was, I only know that I had to manually set the Z zero because i couldn’t get the probe to complete a circuit.
You can still get the detail you want (using the bit you want) by manually setting the Z height to the material surface.
Thanks. They are the ones that were purchased when the school bought the machine.
Haven’t had the issue with other bits. I might try a different engraver bit. Was under the pump with kids wanting to complete their masterpieces.
Understand… sometimes you just have to set Z height (Zero) manually.