Surface Not Found

[smounic]

I'm just setting up my lathe with MSM turn and when probing I keep getting surface not found. I can see that the probe triggered because it lights up on the MSM screen. But it doesn't back off and go slow for the second surface check. For some reason it seems to work properly about 1/5 times on the X axis, but seems more reliable on the Z. I don't think its a noise issue. This is an imsrv probe interfaced to a Gecko G540. There is no LED on the probe, it is purely passive. I'm also using a smoothstepper, but I'm not sure that makes much of a difference. Do you have any thoughts on what I might have configured/setup incorrectly?

[DaveCVI]

Hi,

I'm just setting up my lathe with MSM turn and when probing I keep getting surface not found.

Hum, that sentence confuses me as there are no probing operations in the MSM lathe screen set....
Perhaps you meant MSM mill-turn?

IN any case I'll try to get to the probe setup question while puzzling over this.

I can see that the probe triggered because it lights up on the MSM screen. But it doesn't back off and go slow for the second surface check. For some reason it seems to work properly about 1/5 times on the X axis, but seems more reliable on the Z.

OK, step 1: set "probe Slow3 feed rate" in the probing parameters panel = 0. That will disable the 2nd probe operation. We want a simpler setup for initial debugging.

Do probes now become more reliable?
If so, I suspect a that the probe feed rates in use are too slow.
This is covered in section 8.11 of the MSM mill user manual. Go thru that section and make the tests applicable to two axis lathe (again, mill turn?) operation. What you describes sounds at first pass to me to be contact bounce from too slow a probe rate. In particular this shows up with the 2nd probe operation which people tend to set to a very slow feed rate - and that causes the operation to fail.

I don't think its a noise issue.

Don't draw that conclusion yet - try adding some debouce to the probe input via the mach config dialog. Does this change the behavior?

This is an imsrv probe interfaced to a Gecko G540. There is no LED on the probe, it is purely passive.

Since you mentioned the G540, also have a read thru section 6.3 of the MSM mill user manual.

I'm also using a smoothstepper, but I'm not sure that makes much of a difference. Do you have any thoughts on what I might have configured/setup incorrectly?

The SS should not be the issue here (as long as the SS firmware etc is current; very early drivers had some probing problems that have been fixed) - there are lots of MSM users doing probing operations.

Dave