After sphere info missing, the calibration did not work any more. Help needed.

https://www.pcdmisforum.com/forum/pc-dmis-enterprise-metrology-software/pc-dmis-for-cmms/478179-auto-calibration-avoidance-z-axis
I followed the link. Changed the prehit retact from 3 to 4mm, The Z value was 80 mm, which was right. after I manually hit the center of the sphere, it can not do the second hit, close to the surface of the sphere and popped out error message.

I did try one more time. When I did the manually hit, the probe usually retract after hit the center of the sphere, but I did not retract today .... hardware issue??

In the settings for a qualification sphere there is a size. This has to be set to the size of the sphere you are using. That should be a calibrated (traceable to NIST here in the U.S.) number you know to a lot of decimal places.
This is the function that lets the CMM determine what size things are when using multiple "sides" of the stylus, like measuring across a circle or walls on a slot.

If the diameter is REALLY off, it could miss on the hits trying to find the sphere.

I don't know what controller you are on, but on some, if the turtle button is not hot on the jog box, the machine won't compensate for the hit. This would make it not retract (I beleive) and also make the machine think the sphere is somewhere on Z that it isn't, making subsequent hits miss the sphere.

With the limitted info available, I'd suggest starting with those two items. Get the diameter correct (the vector for the stem is important too, but not the problem you are describing at the moment), and make sure your hit is right.

Calibrate with five manual hits (in the buttons in teh cal window select MAN not DCC+DCC, just MAN). Does that get you results?

Can you qualify the position you do manually in DCC+DCC AFTER doing it manually?

I don't think you have a hardware issue, I could be wrong, but this sounds like a human made situation, based on the information available to me at this time.

In the settings for a qualification sphere there is a size. This has to be set to the size of the sphere you are using. That should be a calibrated (traceable to NIST here in the U.S.) number you know to a lot of decimal places.
This is the function that lets the CMM determine what size things are when using multiple "sides" of the stylus, like measuring across a circle or walls on a slot.

If the diameter is REALLY off, it could miss on the hits trying to find the sphere.

I don't know what controller you are on, but on some, if the turtle button is not hot on the jog box, the machine won't compensate for the hit. This would make it not retract (I beleive) and also make the machine think the sphere is somewhere on Z that it isn't, making subsequent hits miss the sphere.

With the limitted info available, I'd suggest starting with those two items. Get the diameter correct (the vector for the stem is important too, but not the problem you are describing at the moment), and make sure your hit is right.

Calibrate with five manual hits (in the buttons in teh cal window select MAN not DCC+DCC, just MAN). Does that get you results?

Can you qualify the position you do manually in DCC+DCC AFTER doing it manually?

I don't think you have a hardware issue, I could be wrong, but this sounds like a human made situation, based on the information available to me at this time.

Thank you so much. The sphere size is right which I followed other machine settings, 25 mm, I uploaded the controller picture, right now the calibration can not go, even finish one hit.
After I did the manually hit , it moved to the second hit position and stopped there,,,

Our plants got hit hard by strikes, the other guy got laid off and I am the only guy to take care both plants. I am not very much familiar with this brown&sharpe machine, the v2015.1 has problem with edit window off during running ( No setting could recover it), so I did reset the software yesterday,
Anything else I should work on after reset?

Thanks

One more thing I would mention. Even I have problem with A0B0, if any program does not use this angle, the machine can still check part.... It looks not a hardware issue.

When I mentioned manual, I didn't mean just that one manual hit on the ball (needs to be in the direction the probe is pointing, by the way, in case you didn't know).

When you open the probe qualification dialogue, select angles (like A0B0) and then click measure, another dialogue opens.
In the upper right area, there are some options with circles next to them you can put a black dot in one of.
MAN
DCC
MAN+DCC
DCC+DCC

Put the circle in MAN, and set the number of hits to 5.

Proceed and take one hit on top of the sphere and four hits around the sphere's equator.

When back in the original dialogue, look at the results (a button for results).

It will tell you what it expected and what it measured along with a standard deviation value.

When you do that manually, how are those numbers?

Picture looks like a 2mm stylus, so it should say the stylus measured at about 2mm and the std. dev. should be below .1mm (I think, I don't do metric, MURICA!).

If those numbers are good, go back in the probe qualification, select A0B0, put the black dot in DCC+DCC, set the number of hits to 17, there should be a black dot in the "User Defined" calibration method found just below the MAN, DCC, MAN+DCC, DCC+DCC thing, put in four levels from 0 degrees to 90 degrees (for the stylus in the picture).

Does it run that now?

Does it give good results when you open the results and look at them?

Probe files get corrupted sometimes, and wiping them (or restoring a back up if you have one) becomes necessary.

Also, some builds that are especially custom might make a situation where you HAVE to do a MAN qualification at all the angles you want first THEN do the DCC+DCC.

That one hit you are taking is the MAN+DCC option, where you take one hit, in the vector of the probe, and then the machine takes three more before doing the qualifition. It will do that at every head rotation on MAN+DCC.

If you say the sphere has moved and you want to manually locate it, you'll have to take that hit one time only, first head position, regardless of how many angles you qualify. You should NOT be doing this unless you actually moved the sphere OR restarted the CMM Controller OR crashed the probe into something. You should do this for one stylus and position (having a dedicated master is best), and then never say Yes again until one of the above conditions is met.

NOT all controllers retract on their own, YOU have to retract the probe with the jogbox.

Found the root cause.

The program I used uses a my defined probe and it was not the probe which was calibrating .