RepRap: Blog

Having made a Touch Probe that works give or take a micron, I wanted to start printing in resin again. But I became troubled by the issue of zeroing the probe's point on the slide to the stage where it was causing prevarication. Thus prevaricating, I decided to stick a Probe Tip on the Touch Probe:

I turned the probe beam section into an L-shaped trough and just glued the probe wire in with copious cyanoacrylate adhesive (wire was held in place with Blue Tape while that cured). The side wall of the L prevents adhesive from seeping into the flexures. There is no electrical probe connection - I'll be levelling it manually, so no need for a Z Touch capability right now.

The main concern is that I'll knacker the probe tip by banging it on the glass slide before I figure the height out. These tips seem fairly robust though, so I might get away with it. I'll test on aluminium first, which is a bit softer.

A minor concern is that the probe beam might vibrate too much. I didn't see that happening during touch tests. Limitation: The whole purpose of is is because I can't see micron movements... 

The main operational disadvantage is that I can no longer view the Stage from directly above. The Touch Probe flexures get in the way. The new microscope pole clamps are working pretty well, so I hope I'll still be able to get an informative angle on what's happening at the pointy end. But if I place a microscope to view from the "front" then I can't twist the pole to move both microscopes out of the way as easily. We'll see if that's an actual problem.

If the new touch/tip probe does anything useful I'll upload the CAD files.