Comparison of cheap touch probes

[Muzzer]

The inner bore of a ball bearing race will be deadly accurate by our standards and they are usually a nice round number.

[swissi]

Make a connector. Probe side has the jumper that shorts the probe or tool touch off detect.

Thanks! that's a great idea. Ill just take apart the cable plug and solder on a jumper.

Also, I noticed in your wonderful Touch Probe Configuration video [
that you used a ring gage to set the probe pre-travel.
Would it be possible to use something round, like a brass pipe fitting or extrusion instead of a ring gage? Since you repeat the test until it is repeatable?

thanks for the help!

Just an FYI that the ProbeApp V3 has now a Touch Probe Calibration cycle included. Very simple to run and no need to calculate numbers and set parameters manually as all is done automatically by the calibration cycle.

You even have the option to calibrate for bore dimension accuracy or overall average accuracy and if you don't know what the difference is, check out my post here: ProbeApp V3: Test and Improve Touch Probe Accuracy

-swissi

[rk9268vc]

You should really get the ring gage.
Marty

Yeah, I think youre right.
I found 2 decent ones, a .74975 and a 1.9450
which would work better? I know it says to go with a 1" but is it better to be a little over or under or does it not matter?

Thanks

[martyscncgarage]

You should really get the ring gage.
Marty

Yeah, I think youre right.
I found 2 decent ones, a .74975 and a 1.9450
which would work better? I know it says to go with a 1" but is it better to be a little over or under or does it not matter?

Thanks

I believe you just need one with known value

[Upnorth]

I would go with the smaller one. You can go through the probing routine faster.

[Upnorth]

The KP-3

I notice that the KP-3 uses 3 conductors, and the tormach one only uses 2.
What does the probe detect feature do? Will it work without it?
Thanks for the help

I am using a 2 wire probe. I would not ever consider running it without "probe connected" input especially for a beginner. I am running a third party probe. It works well mostly but once in a while I find the position is a bit off. If I'm setting up a critical part I run the probe app twice to make sure that the position is the same both times. It usually is. Point I want to make is that it's probably best to buy the Centroid probe if you can afford it. If something big ever happens to the probe I have now it will be replaced with the Centroid one.

The way my probe connected input is wired is through the probe jack at the control end. I'm using a stereo type jack the ones people use for old style headphones. When you insert the jack into the socket it shorts out a set of contacts and this indicates probe connected. The jacks I have came from old telecom equipment so I'm not sure if this style is common or not.

My normal way of using it is to first connect the cable for the probe to the control unit. This provides protection for the probe even though it's not connected yet. Then I put the probe in the spindle and connect the cable. Then I do whatever probing routine I need to set up using Swissi's probe app. After I'm done I remove the probe from the spindle then disconnect the cable.