Using a 3D touch probe in MACH3

I finally got my 3D touch probe!
Now I can finally probe

• the exact center of my 4th axis (left+ride side in Y and probed height minus radius at the Y=0 position)
• probe the A=0 position on my 4th axis be turning it until chuck #0 makes contact at a known probe location in X,Y,Z
• check the orientation of non-conductive blocks of materials and rotate my work coordinate-system accordingly
• probe the height of the top-side of non-conductive materials
• check that I inserted a cylinder into the 4th axis straight

This also means that I can pause a long running job (when my weekend in the hobby workshop ends),
switch everything off, come back the next weekend and  home everything within 0,01mm to resume.

I just soldered on the connector (same connector I use for the existing tool-height probe) and have yet to test it in the YOOCNC6040.
It is normally closed but luckily my normally open tool height probe is modified to be kept high with an extra +5V line and gets pulled to GND on contact with the spindle. (The actual plan was to isolate the frame of the CNC and pull that to +5V. Then any metal to metal contact of the spindle to the machine would be an automatic E-Stop but I didn't get that to work due to the stepper casings being at GND and having conductive contact with the frame.)

Update (2017-03-23):
I finally soldered the last channels of the 5V power supply box for all end stops and probes.

Links

• the touch probe
• announcement in stepcraft forum