- #Cnc touch plate shapeoko 3 manual#
- #Cnc touch plate shapeoko 3 software#
- #Cnc touch plate shapeoko 3 code#
Since the plexiglass sides would be lifting forward-and-up away from the rear riser, when they came back down they would need to fall into place. My approach was to hinge it at the top by creating a rear “riser” to which a piano hinge could be mounted. But, to get at the entire machine in a manner closest to not having an enclosure at all, most of the structure would lift up and out of the way. The idea was to have quick access through a front door that hinged up. It was going to be a more complicated design than I would have liked in order to achieve my goal of total access. That way I could work out some of the details before starting construction. I began by doing the fundamental design in SketchUp. In hindsight, I'm now glad I built it as it does a great job. At this point I was already in deep, so I decided to press on. I also didn’t want an enclosure that kept me from easily accessing the machine. The collector and enclosure were becoming a big infrastructure project. I wondered if I shouldn’t just stay with plastic and aluminum and forget about milling wood and plastics that create dust. I wanted to get a feel for the suction force and other details before designing an enclosure, as it would incorporate a “port” to suck out the fine particles.Īfter setting up the dust collector and experimenting, I began to have doubts about building the cabinet. I started by getting the huge Harbor Freight dust collector and retrofitting it with the popular (Wynn Environmental 35A274NANO Cartridge). After reading about the hazards of shop dust, I decided to go ahead and design an enclosure for my Shapeoko3 CNC. Also, when I made a flange out of Renshape material, it put a pink powder everywhere. I stood there with the vacuum nozzle most of the time, but it really couldn’t capture it all.
#Cnc touch plate shapeoko 3 manual#
Much easier than manual zeroing and I don’t have to worry about breaking small diameter tools or chipping the carbide on bigger ones.When milling a drink holder from old teak-veneered particle board material, the dust layer it put on everything in the shop was pretty bad. I had to convert from metric to inch measurements for the movements and enter the height of my touch plate (.487″).
#Cnc touch plate shapeoko 3 code#
Searching for help on the Mach4 forums I came across a thread on this topic and some script code from another user “DazTheGas” see the message thread. This is one of the points where having an active user community helps tremendously. So I had to modify the UI / Screen set, add a new button and some scripting to do this.
#Cnc touch plate shapeoko 3 software#
This is all great in concept but the Mach4 software does not complete this for you. Once complete, the height of the touch plate is subtracted off and you now have the height of your base (spoil) board on which the project will rest. The idea is to drive the Z axis down at modest speed until it touches the plate, and then it backs off slightly (~0.1″) and then moves downward very slowly to touch again for the final height. The router spindle itself is grounded for safety and this conveniently completes the circuit for the touch plate. The touch plate is simply a block of acrylic plastic about 3/8″ thick with a sheet of brass mounted on top and connected to the “Probe” input. It requires at least version 2803 of the Mach 4 software which I am using with the Ethernet Smooth Stepper (ESS) version 130 software. First was getting the Mach 4 “Probe” input working.
So I was determined to set up a touch plate and have that working with the Mach 4 controller software. This has to be done after each tool change and is just plain tedious. The hard part has been easily zeroing out for cutter height. I measure from the stops / fence to the home position and modify the zero references and I am off and running for several projects.
The way I am currently setting up my fixturing on the CNC table, I have a left size (x axis work zero) fence and some movable stops from Rockler in the table slots. 2″ diameter touch) are bit small for woodworking due to the rougher surface of the wood and the large ones seem to be easier for me without false indications of the edge. I particularly like the 1/2 inch diameter ones like this one: Brown & Sharpe 599-792 Edge Finder Single. X and Y i have been doing with a standard edge finder. One of the hard parts has been zeroing out each of the axis. These can be furniture pieces or parts for the router or other tools. That is I can now with modest effort actually make useful things. The CNC router has achieved functional status.