Ok I will work on recording another video, however, at the beginning of the video the bit in the spindle is skimming the spoilboard while the DRO Z reads zero. Right before the video, I used the corner touch plate to set the height of the spoilboard.
Switch back to a spindle tool then set your z zero on top of a part using the spindle, then switch to the laser using the the deploy button and drive it down in Z and tell me if it’s correct or not.
In your video you didn’t do that. You just showed the Z zero not being correct after calibration, you didn’t do the next steps
Why? If the XYZ offsets for the laser are correct, touching off with the laser should be exactly the same as any other tool with correct XYZ offsets, whether it’s in the spindle or not.
When you are on the laser tool you cannot use it for XYZ zeroing. If you do you risk setting your part location in the wrong place. This is why if you attempt it in the set part zeros menu you get kicked out.
All part locating needs to be done with the spindle.
Yeah, I understood what the user needs to do, I’m wondering why Avid set it up that way? I mean, you should be able to set your part location with ANY tool, and if you can’t do that with the laser, that implies that the laser’s XYZ offset is “special”.
On my machine (again, linuxcnc) I have two non-spindle tools (laser and microscope) and I can freely switch between those and spindle-mounted tools, and nothing cares which one is active when using them for touching off.
It doesn’t work that way on Centroid (there’s no “head shift”) although that feature may be added soon.
For now, you cannot zero XYZ with your laser.
Hey Eric, Just got done recording this video where we did exactly what you said to do, thanks again for all the quick responses.
We also happened to record another video before you responded, where we showed us doing a MTC, then zeroing the Z axis to the spoilboard, then double checking that the Z zero was correctly set by skimming the top of the work piece. Then we went to the UTILs menu and calibrated the laser height, using a 21mm block placed on the spoilboard which the laser body was then rest on top of. At the end of the video, I jogged the machine down to the DRO Z zero, and the laser was still far above the spoilboard. Not sure if this video helps, but I figured I would share it as well. Thanks again Eric.
OK, I have narrowed down my issue at least. It is the XYZ touchplate being inconsistent. Over the last couple of days, I have had it ignore the XY and Z, ignore only Z and sometimes work. I have to check each time I use it. It is most often ignoring the Z.
I changed the thickness of my workpiece and reset my part zeros with the XYZ. The first time, it ignored all 3. I watched the DRO go back to non-zero numbers even though the magnet was on and it sensed the bit in the spindle. The next time, it ignored Z only. The third time, it got them all right. Time to take it apart and clean it up?
Ok, we’ve got two people in there trying to solve similar problems. This is getting a little out of scope for the forum
@Bob please open a support ticket and reference this thread when you do. Someone will take care of you. We might need to remote in, I suspect there’s setting here that’s not quite correct.
@Gbeck214 same for you if you haven’t figured out what’s going on