I know a lot of people have upgraded their touch probes and tool setters, but is this possible without changing the controller & moving away from cut control? Looking at drewtronics FWIW.
Hello, I’m new to the forum, but thought I would ring in on this topic. I’ve had my MR 1 for approximately six months now and I’ve struggled with the touch probe and repeatability. I recently purchased a Renshaw MP 11, tested it out and it seems to work fine on the cut control system. Only downside is, it requires its own power source of 15 V @ 50 mA. I don’t think that will be difficult to install in the cabinet. The other issue is losing the height because of the body on the MP 11. I also recently purchased the Z riser blocks from Langmuir to raise the gantry to increase my Z height 1.5 inches with all that being said after installing the MP 11 I’m only going to lose approximately 1.202 inches when probing. I think I can live with that considering the trade-off for the precision Renshaw touch probe. I’m still chasing down my runout issue and I think I’ve narrowed it down to the collets and collet nut. I just ordered some Rego Fix and Techniks collets, but I’m stuck with Langmuir’s proprietary nut. I wish they would’ve made the spindle with common collet nut threads.
Hmmf you got me interested so I was reading into it, looks like you might be able to get away with 30VDC max. Is there anything in the box running at 24V you could use for probe power? I can’t remember if there is or not.
Also how’d you wire it? I’m considering it but like you said she’s pretty long.
Would you mind measuring how far it sticks out from the spindle? I’m guessing on dims, but it looks like I’d have about 1.3” of clearance from my vise w/ A-5000-7551 (L=~0.7”) probe and no gantry risers.
Perhaps a moot point since I always probe my fixed jaw, part stop, and parallel to set my WCS but every once in a blue moon I use the MR-1 as a CMM so that would suck.
The stepper PSU in the stock box is 36V.
You can get inexpensive DC-DC converters that will convert 36V to 24V or whatever you need.
I use a PGFun probe on my converted MR-1 (LinuxCNC, not CutControl). They are inexpensive, compact, and I get good probe repeatability. I’ll let someone else figure out how to make it compatible. It can run off of 5V so it should work with the stock control.
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The Renshaw is a four wire probe, DC+ and DC-, then the two signal wires that are normally closed. I just used the yellow 5v wire from the current probe lead to feed the signal wire then out to the orange stock signal wire to cut control. The red wire in the stock lead will not be used.
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EDIT: I finally had a chance to probe around the electrical cabinet. The Langmuir touch probe uses 3 wires, color coded (in the panel) and numbered (as numbered inside the aviation plug) as follows:
- 3P Wire #1 (Black): +5VDC
- 3P Wire #2 (Blue): Probe Signal Wire, pulled low by a 10kΩ resistor in the controller.
- 3P Wire #3 (White): GND (Common, aka the 15-30VDC and 5VDC supply have their grounds shorted)
The normally closed contacts are between +5VDC and the Probe Signal Wire. Probe signal wire thus reads +5V when probe connected, otherwise when triggered or disconnected reads ~0V.
Your machine may vary in its color scheme or numbering but the function of the wires remain the same. The use of the Renishaw requires a 4th wire, for 15-30VDC. So, I’ll be replacing the stock 3P aviation plug with a 4P, and updating the Langmuir probe to the same 4P plug, in case I need the extra height I can still use it. I’ll wire the new aviation plug as follows, per the diagram below, omitting shielding unless I find it necessary since I’m still using the Langmuir tool setter so I can’t tie my shield to the chassis since my chassis could be 5V lol.
- 4P Wire #1: 24VDC
- 4P Wire #2: Common GND (Assuming there’s one spot in the panel where all the GND’s are tied together for 5V, 36V and now 24V, the 24V will also now tie in at this location.)
- 4P Wire #3: +5VDC
- 4P Wire #4: Probe Signal Wire
Got the probe wired up per the above diagram and no shielding. It’s freaking awesome, thanks for recommending it.
I’ve clocked everything w/ a sharpie mark so I can put it back in the same way I did dialing in the runout, and I’m getting less than 0.0002 runout after load, unload & use of the probe: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hH-i3HeAbqY
My Langmuir probe always seemed to runout more after I use it for the first time and I could never get it to stay perfect.
Probed a 4" gage block in XY and 0.85" in XYZ and they both measure dead nuts in all axes, not even off by 0.0001: https://youtube.com/shorts/J5bMUw-EJdw
Repeatability isn’t even funny, I still haven’t gotten it to budge a single tenth probing my WCS. Stock probe would always bounce around a couple tenths for me (not to say it’s bad).
It’s also nice having the quick detach cable at the probe which I can hangup and leave in the machine, and I didn’t realize how nice having a 1/2" shank probe is, since it’s what I usually start all my programs with.
Only annoying thing is, I have to remove the collet entirely to remove the probe if I have it over my tool setter since the shank extends so far into the collet. But I’ll chop the excess shank length off in the bandsaw eventually.
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That’s awesome!! I’m glad to see that Renishaw doing work on your MR1! Thanks for the update and guidance on the wiring.