Thank you and I appreciate the information!
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Thanks! Good information here to questions I didn’t know I had. I’m glad I ordered the probe.
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A couple of years back I had a customer post a comment on the Inventables forum titled “The Triquetra Touch Plate - Is it really worth it”. The title alone was a gut punch. I had never had a bad review. I had to read it so I could correct any problems. Long story short, someone hit a power pole and took out his power in the middle of a very long carving with multiple bits. He had used the Triquetra Touch plate to set all 3 axis. When his power was restored he reset his zeros and restarted his last tool path. The project was saved!! He said the wood cost him more money than the touch plate. So to answer the question he posed in the title. He clearly stated, “Yes, it’s worth every penny”.
So if anybody is on the fence about getting a touch plate, get off and get one. I promise, you’ll be glad you did.
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I was on the fence about picking one up, always just manually zero’d, but your previous well written and thoughtful post directly made me pick one up. Just thought I’d write it out so you know your time on here isn’t wasted!
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Thank you Sir. I get a lot of emails saying essentially the same thing. Usually it is something like, “If I had known how useful and easy it was to setup my origin with a Touch Plate I would have picked one up a long time ago”.
Believe it or not, with a 3 axis touch plate, it is sometimes possible to recover from a 3D engraving that was aborted. I have personally assisted more than a couple of my customers with this. There is nothing like that sinking feeling when you are 6 hours in to a carve and it just stops because of a power failure or having to hit the E-Stop.
How about those big projects that you started too late in the day and need to stop for the night. Do you leave your machine on all night so you don’t lose your position only to find that the next morning something caused a reset anyway? Or do you just let it run all night hoping for the best. With a 3 axis touch plate you can simply power down for the night and then when your ready, power up, re-zero with the touch plate, load your next tool path and be confident that the overnight pause will never be noticed in your finished product.
How about when you’re knee deep in a long project and the Wife comes out telling you that little Susie needs some shapes cut out for a school project. Would you dare stop the work in progress and go so far as to remove it from your machine and put it on a shelf? I would. You can too. You’ll be the hero little Susie always knew you were, and your wife just might stop pointing at the clock. All because you are confident that you can remount the original project on your machine, not even in the same spot, and start the next tool path.
All of these things are actually possible with three axis probing. The only thing you need to do to make it all possible is make sure that one edge of your raw stock is aligned with the machine travel. I always align the longest edge or the edge that will be preserved until the end. A simple bump stop makes this very easy to do.
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Concur with all that’s been said about the 3-axis probe, but would like to remind scoffers about the convenience, precision, and repeatability of re-zeroing the z-axis after each bit change. Although, after Charley’s discussion, I’m sure I’m just preaching to the choir here.
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I was sold on the concept by just having a Z touch off on my last gantry unit. Anyone who has futzed with a sheet of copy paper trying to zero the Z manually wants one from the get go. To have it zero all three axes is a bonus.
There are use cases where nonstandard zeros are better or even necessary. We will talk of these in another thread down the road. I wrote an instructable on this several years ago that I’ll have to dig up and rewrite for the Onefinity. That will be after I get mine as I’d not want to be talking out my butt!
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Hey Charley,
will my 3 axis touch plate that I currently use with my X-Carve work with the Onefinity?? I really would like to not have to spend another $100 for a new one. I’ve already done the fine tuning measurements with mine and have all of the quick macro codes set up in Picsender. Will I have to do anything else? Will I even need Picsender anymore???
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Hey Ivan… Yes it will work. However, you will need a connector so you can plug it in to our controller. If you reach our to Jenn at info@onefinitycnc.com she will help you out.
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Thanks Mark. I will definitely get in touch with Jenn. I’m impatiently waiting for the next round of orders.
@Mark or @charleyntexas - similar question but for the Triquetra touch plate I got something like 3 years ago for my Shapeoko. I’m assuming I just need the connector? Any compelling reason to purchase this new design vice the my current one?
-Tom
No, you don’t need a new one unless your looking to bump up the “Cool Factor”. I don’t know if OneFinity will make the wires available of it they will want me to supply them. Either way, when the time comes, there will be one available.
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For those of you who already own a Triquetra 3 axis touch plate, you will be able to use it with the OneFinity. All you need is the correct wiring which is now available through Triquetra CNC. You will be getting exactly the same wire that ships with the OneFinity touch plate. It is much the same as you may already have but a more flexible wire which greatly reduces the chances of the touch plate moving during zeroing due to the wire pushing or pulling it. You can get it HERE:
https://triquetra-cnc.com/product/magnetic-ground-connector-wire-banana-plug/
Just be sure to select the OneFinity as the type needed. The picture of the wire is not what you will be getting. I will update that asap. If you look at a OneFinity touch plate there is a picture of the wire there.
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A new way to accurately measure the X and Y axis of the OneFinity Touch Plate using the OneFinity Machine itself.
For a long time now I have been fielding questions on how to correctly measure a touch plate. To make a long story short, I have come up with a new way to get it done with the highest accuracy yet. It is done using the CNC machine itself to do the measurements. It requires a gcode file that you run just like any other carving gcode file. The file will probe the plate at specific locations and the measurements are displayed as coordinates in the X and Y axis Digital Readouts (DRO’s) on the OneFinity Controller.
I have created a YouTube video demonstrating how it is done and below that is a copy of the gcode to use. The forum will not allow uploading a txt file so you will need to copy the g-code and past it into a text file, save it and send it to your OneFinity just like you would a carving file. DO NOT use a word processor to create the file such as Microsoft Word. It will add formatting characters to the file and break the code. Use something like Windows Notepad instead.
When positioning the touch plate for probing to measure it, the touch plate must but upside down and oriented like the one in the video. Be sure to place it square on the table so it is aligned with the travel of the X and Y axis. Since the measurements for the touch plate are stored using millimeters, the file runs in metric mode automatically.
Here is the video link and below that is the gcode to copy
CODE EDITED ON 10/9/2020 TO CORRECT PROBING X AXIS SPEED THAT WAS WAY TOO FAST
G21
G91
G92 X0
G92 Y0
G92 Z0
G38.2 Z -25.400 F75
G1 Z 2.540 F762
G1 Y -25.4000 F762
G91 Z -5.080 F762
G38.2 Y 25.400 F75
G92 Y0
G1 Y -2.540 F762
G1 Z 5.080 F762
G1 Y 44.45 F762
G38.2 Y 76.200 F75
M0 (MSG, Write down your current Y Axis Location then click continue to measure the X axis)
G1 Y -44.450 F762
G1 X 25.400 F762
G1 Z -5.080 F762
G38.2 X -25.400 F75
G92 X0
G1 X2.540 F762
G1 Z 5.080 F762
G1 X -44.450 F762
G38.2 X -76.200 F75
M0 (MSG, Write down your current X Axis Location. Click Continue to End program)
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Charley, this is awesome… Thanks so much for putting this together for all of us!
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Newbie, haven’t setup anything yet, but: why did you skip over the Z setting in the video?
Michael,
The Z is relative to your work piece and changes with every project, you only need to set the widths so the machine knows where 0 X&Y are.
Fully Automating the Z axis setting will only work if the material under the touch plate was a conductive metal. If I wrote the gcode to probe to a wood surface the way it does the X and Y in the video it would try to just keep on probing… not good to say the least. I had considered using some aluminum foil to make it work but it would have to be perfectly flat against the surface it was on or the reading would be inaccurate. IF you placed your touch plate on something that was conductive it would work but if for some reason there wasn’t a good electrical contact between the touch plate and the surface it is on there again it would not work and could damage something because it would just keep on probing downward. The last thing I want to do is provide anyone with something that could cause problems so I omitted that process.
That leaves you with two methods of determining the Z axis thickness for your touch plate.
#1 Measure it with a set of calipers or a micrometer and put that value in the settings for the Z axis. This will get it very close but may not be perfect if there is any error in stepper calibration. Be sure to measure in millimeters
#2 (Best Method) Place your touch plate on a piece of material like you normally would, right side up. Use a bit inserted upside down like in the video and position it over the target circle. Copy the Probe Z gcode (below) to a text document and run the code. When it finishes remove the touch plate and then jog your bit downward in Metric Mode with a thin slip of paper under it such as a walmart receipt. Continue jogging down until you trap the paper. You should be able to pull the paper out without tearing it but there should be some resistance when you do. Next look at the Z axis DRO to determine the bit position and record that location as the Z axis measurement on the settings tab. Be sure to disregard the “-” symbol and record the measurement as a whole number not a negative number.
Probe Z gcode
M5
G21
G92 Z0
G38.2 Z -25.4 F75
G92 Z0
G91 G1 Z 6.35 F600
M0 (MSG, Remove Touch Plate and jog to surface to determine Touch Plate Z Axis Thickness)
M2
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