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Disc Probe Hitting Cal-sphere Shank

Good morning Forum Guru's,

I am once again pleading for your help. I am trying to setup a disc probe for some projects coming up and have never had this issue occur so I am scratching my head at a solution. Perhaps everyone on here can shine some light on a solution.

Below is a picture of the probe build as well as utility editor. As you can see, my Calibration Mode settings are ghosted out and unable to be edited for some reason. This is the same thing that occurs on each of my Scan Module head style probe builds, but on anything with the Touch Probe force module that is unlocked again. That being said, I am unsure if the issue is caused by anything that can be changed within that dialog box. This is the first company I have worked with that uses a scan module, I have only ever used touch trigger and need to brush up on the scan procedures etc. to fully utilize.

The issue; When calibrating in any head orientation besides A0B0 the disc takes the initial hit on the sphere, and then beings taking the touch probe hits along the equator. At this point it will try and swing the entire diameter of the sphere, coming to the bottom where the shank is located and it will crash and alarm out. I am going out on a limb and assuming the Cal-sphere to disc probe size relation could be the issue as the sphere only .59025" and the only disc we had laying around was an 18mmx7.5mm.

I can get this to successfully calibrate in A0B0 with good results, and it looks like it follows the -5°/5° start/end angles automatically but when it got to A90B90 the disc is still trying to swing around to the bottom of the Cal-sphere. In A0B0 it takes the initial hit atop the sphere, takes hits along the equator in clockwise/counterclockwise rotation and then beings a scan in the same manner, at 3 different levels, counter and clockwise once again.

I opened a case and the tech sent me this article; How do I calibrate a disk stylus on an analog probe?​ Am I not seeing something within that article that should be of help or was that just them tossing me a piece of paper and telling me to figure it out? I have read other forum links and wanted to just calibrate in manual mode as that seems to be the easy way to solve this, but as you can see that isn't even an option I can toggle.

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  • Hey hey this is what I needed to hear!

    Gonna convince my boss to order me a 1.0" tomorrow much appreciated.
  • .. . I am going out on a limb and assuming the Cal-sphere to disc probe size relation could be the issue as the sphere only .59025" and the only disc we had laying around was an 18mmx7.5mm.

    You are right in your assumption - 1.0'' will sort this out. We have both size spheres onsite. I did try on 1.0'' and it works with analogue probe/scan module:


    Ø18 disc should clash on .59025" (Ø15mm​) sphere as per trigonometry calculation (in millimeters):
    ​Regards


    Do you have the ability to give me the part number to that exact cal-sphere? We have the same tower fixture, and I didn't wanna get a large shank 1.0" because the threads are countersunk and that's why I couldn't use the 1.0 we had here, it's on a giant stem with a tiny m8 thread at the bottom.

    Does that one use the same M8 thread in the various angles? I wanted to get something like the one we currently have but cannot find it on Hexagon Shop.


    This is our setup. It's on a massive Delta Slant, makes no sense as to why they would buy a massive machine and then get this tiny lil cal sphere.


  • we had to contact Hexagon directly to replace our 15mm sphere here in the UK, we were unable to find one on the Hexagon website and looked around elsewhwere for one but struggled to find one with the right dimension stem, surprisingly they were not overpriced as we expected it to be.
  • Generated a quote request thinking that was the case.

    Much appreciated!
  • For all whom need to order stuff that you cannot find on the site, email me with the address below and I can send you the catalog I got from support with the cal-sphere I need within.

    Thanks all for help, will report back to post when I get the sphere and successfully calibrate this disc.

  • Were you able to successfully calibrate the disk probe? I am having difficulties calibrating in A90,B90 orientation, as it continually hits the shank of the 1" calibration sphere.
  • I would be interested as well... I also have a massive DEA Slant
    I'm currently trying to get a disk probe to calibrate. Searching the forums for info for me past the point of a A0B0 calibration (locate the sphere with the master probe and then do MAN+DCC and selecting NO for sphere movement) No problems there and it can even scan diameters.

    Now trying to add A90B0 things were going great... Located the X-Minus sphere with the master probe (at A0B0 which is how we do it for everything) then proceed to swap the disk probe and run calibration which also works just fine (again MAN+DCC and selecting NO for sphere movement)
    The calibration finishes and tells me the deviation is too high. Which I am ok with, but as soon as you click ok and try to move the probe again it almost immediately starts taking phantom hits, giving excessive deflection errors, and sometimes probe oscillation errors. Seems the only fix was to disable the probe on the job box, then clear all the errors and rotate back to A0B0.

    My setup is as follows.
    PH10MQ
    SP25M
    SM25-4
    SH25-4
    30mm x 1.55 ceramic disk

    I originally had a 100mm extension there making it a 300mm probe, but after reading on the Renishaw website removed the extension thinking that was the problem. However still having the same issue now the length is within spec.

    Anyone have any ideas on how to not have the machine freak out once calibration finishes?
    The only thought from the team is that maybe its staying in scan mode after the calibration finishes so its extra sensitive to movements? Maybe the module is going bad?
  • Yes I've adjusted it down to ±5° maybe too much, maybe not enough, however the numbers look great at A0, B0 but the A90, B90 the disk hits the shank.
  • How large a disc and how large a cal-sphere? That's what did it for me. You can also change that figure inside settings editor some.