Contact Probe

The TP-100 contact probe is a 3/8 shank ( or 10mm optional ), 5 way mechanical contact scanning device with a 2mm ( .0787 in) diameter ruby tip.  It is used with CNC milling and CNC routing style machines to digitize surface and contour data.  When used as a probe the shank is mounted in a spindle collet or chuck or other holder parallel to the spindle axis. The probe also includes a flat base and tip which can be used to convert the probe into a table based tool measurement instrument.  Tip stylus extensions are available in 20, 30, 60 , and 90 mm lengths. 1mm, 3mm, and 4mm diameter, ruby tips styli are also available.

When used with Mach3, a free plugin is available to collect a raw point cloud data set from a 3D surface.  There are also g-code based routines to collect 2D contour data.  Mach3 can also use the tool setter base and flat stylus for tool setting.

When used with DeskCNC, a probed surface is filtered, smoothed, reverse compensated for the probe tip radius, and saved as an .STL CAD file.  The 3D surface machining CAM in DeskCNC can make minor edits to the surface and will produce 3D surfacing toolpaths to duplicate the scanned part.  DeskCNC has automated routines to measure and record tool lengths when the probe is used as a tool setter.  The photo below is a workpiece created from the scan of the leopard above.

This probe will work with CNC controllers that interface to a probing input from a switched contact.  This includes DeskCNC, Mach3, TurboCNC, EMC and many other programs/controllers.