[Yellow Tag] Tormach PCNC 1100 - Crashed and replaced probe

Red / Yellow Tag
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The 5 pin din cable fell out as I was using the Tormach probe today, luckily I had the same probe with me. Swapped it out, then webforum’d my way to adjusting concentricity, effective tip diameter, and tool height using a 1-2-3 block and the 19.998mm ring gauge.

It looks to be probing well now (under half a thou variance on x/y) and I was able to resume my part, but I wanted to mention it since there’s an upcoming Tormach class and I’m not certain I did everything properly. Hopefully!

If down the road there’s interest in using a waterproof and/or locking connector for the aux input panel, I’m interested in making and swapping the parts.

It felt crunchy inside before the threaded part totally broke off, not just a bent tip unfortunately, but it was a good way to learn quick!

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The upside of those probes is they are cheap. The downside is they really can’t take any abuse at all. We may want to switch that to a normally-closed style, I believe in that scenario, path pilot will consider the probe tripped the instant the plug comes out and stop moving. Or, honestly, it may be more useful to consider a Haimer instead. Those have breakaway tips and for most people’s use case, are probably as good or better given they can also be used for tramming, etc. Downside is if you really crash one of those it costs 10x what the cheap amazon probes cost.