Benefits of Scanning Touch Probes for Setups
Touch-trigger probes are commonly used to speed and simplify setups for new jobs, but scanning touch probes are valuable for these duties, too.
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I’ve written a number of articles about on-machine probing as have other Modern Machine Shop editors. (You can find these articles in our Inspection and Measurement Zone.) These probes for machine tools generally come in two flavors—touch-trigger and scanning. The most common use for touch-trigger probes, which take data points one touch of a part at a time, is to use them during setups to automatically determine the position of a part fixtured on a machine and then update the coordinate system to match the part location. What I hadn’t considered is how scanning probes, which scan a part surface to take many data points and are typically used for on-machine inspection routines, can further reduce setup times compared to touch-trigger probes. Learn more here.
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