Hello! Just finished setting up the longmill and addons, attempting to use the probe tool with UGS (August 2019 x64). I’m using all of the exact same settings listed on the touch plate page.
When I attempt to do the probe, the mill will crash into the touch plate and I will get an alarm/error that the probe traveled the distance without activating.
I would like some tips on troubleshooting.
I’ve tried manually touching the banana plug to the magnet and it still did not trigger.
I’ve ensured the wires were connected to the green pin securely.
I’ve ensured the pin is connected to the control board securely.
I’ve tried using the 32-bit version of UGS and restarting the 64-bit, neither fixed the issue.
I do have a voltmeter, so I could probably check the pins and the probe? I have no idea how to use it, so I am currently trying to look into that…
Any other suggestions that might help?
Thanks in advance!
@saros As you knew, Gabriel, all looks good there.
What happens if you just run x and y? To test this, make sure the bit is positioned away from both the side and the front of the plate. (I mention this only because I found this out the hard way and snapped a bit when it ran into the side of the plate.)
@gwilki I am experiencing the same issue in the x/y direction. I placed the block on the corner of a scrap piece of wood and lightly held it (instead of clamping) and ran the probe. The mill touches the block, continues pushing the block & scrap piece until the alarm is tripped.
Exact error:
[Error] An error was detected while sending ‘G38.2 Y25 F150’: (ALARM:5) Probe fail. Probe did not contact the workpiece within the programmed travel for G38.2 and G38.4. Streaming has been paused.
@gwilki I have solved the issue. It was a problem with the banana cable. I will try to describe as best I can how I troubleshooted and then fixed the issue, so that anyone else having this problem can diagnose it. You can skip to the bottom of this post to get to the point if you don’t care about the troubleshooting steps.
Please note I have very little experience in electrical engineering and whatnot, so the terms may not be correct…
I wanted to check that the current was current coming out of the probe and magnet, so I used the voltmeter to test. I had it set to the 20 V option (Google helped me figure out the correct setting). After touching both ends and not getting any current reading, I tested directly inside of the green pins socket, this was reading around 4.89 output.
I disassembled the magnet and banana connector and checked both cables, they also output ~4.89
I re-assembled the magnet and checked by touching it as well as the raw probe wire and it output 4.89
This could only mean that there was an issue with the banana cable. I tried re-inserting the cable and tightening the screw, but that did not work either.
What did work though was stripping the end of the red wire a bit further before re-inserting it into the banana connector. After re-assembling everything and running the probe, everything worked correctly.
