Z probe controller values

Hi everyone. first post in a forum. Looking for a little help. received my machine and had sparks every time I touched my z probe plate to my collet. It would give me an y axis motor error. tracked that down to a pinched wiring harness inside my y axis tube. found 17 volts between controller ground and the machine. I changed the harness with the one provided & corrected the voltage problem but probe still does not function. I checked the harness for the probe & its perfect. tech support wants me to unbolt my machine from the table & remove drag chains & spindle & won’t help further until I do so. The only thing plugged in my controller is my probe and monitor and when I touch banana clip to the magnet - no connectivity. When I check for voltage between then clip and magnet, I get 3.0v. I’m wondering if this is a good number? Just looking to diagnose without dismantling for no reason. Any pointers or feedback would be appreciated. Thanks

Hi Rob - welcome to the forums! You should get around 3.3v for anything that feeding the RPI. If you previously drove 17v into it, it likely fried that input pin (and I’m in a little surprised the RPI survived). Can you try any of the other inputs to see if they work properly? Maybe one of the limit switches? If the others work, you will likely need to replace the RPI or maybe the whole controller.

-Tom

Thanks for the reply! Everything other than the probe works fine. The only thing I could not verify is the laser. I did however check voltage/ resistance & do not have the 3 volts across the two terminals I have on the probe terminals. A quick check on the buildbotics site lead me to believe I should have only .6 of a volt across probe terminals which is why I was wondering if 3v was indeed valid. I did swap out the sd card with a downloaded image & swapped out rpi with a spare I had, to no avail. Leads me to believe controller failure. Just need to convince tech support with out making me remove my drag chains, spindle and machine from the table to diagnose