I need clarification for a few items in the software

Help for setting up and using
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kcassella
Posts: 7
Joined: Sun Aug 31, 2014 7:24 pm

I need clarification for a few items in the software

Post by kcassella »

Where does the software get the data for 'Probe Depth and Probe Clearance'? What should the Probe Depth be? The same with Probe Clearance? When I load my OGF and have the mesh use the parameters from the OGF, Probe Depth is -0.0625. Probe Clearance is 0.0787. It doesn't change the values when I load different OGF's.
In the Probe RPF screen, when I load the results after probing, what am I looking for? I understand missing probe points, but what else? Should I be changing the Threshold values? What are the Threshold values telling me? When I change the amplification, there is one small area (green) on the board that raises up. What is this telling me?
I'm using AutolevellerAE-0.9.4u2.

Thanks for a great software! It works great.
daedelus
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Re: I need clarification for a few items in the software

Post by daedelus »

Sorry for the late reply, been a bit busy these last few days. If you hover the mouse over the fields it should show you a tooltip explaining what these fields mean. Not everything you asked is explained in the tooltips though...

The latest version of AE takes all its settings from the files in <home>/.AE/. These are settings.xml, inOptions.xml and mmOptions.xml for general settings, inch settings and millimetre settings respectively. You can change any settings here or back up the files directly but you should not need to make changes here because you can change the options within AE itself and the values will be overwritten in the files themselves, so that the changes are reflected next time you use AE.

The default settings are...

ZFeed 5
XYFeed 35
ProbeDepth -0.0625
ProbeClearance 0.0787
PointSpacing 0.375
SafeHeight 1.5

for inches, and...

ZFeed 100
XYFeed 600
ProbeDepth -1
ProbeClearance 2
PointSpacing 10
SafeHeight 25

for millimetres.

The probe depth means how far beneath Z0 to continue moving down in the Z axis looking for contact to be made before giving up looking for any surface. For example if probe depth is set to -0.0625, each probe will continue moving down until contact is made or it reaches a depth of -0.0625. If you were to change the probe depth to -1", and you forgot to attach the probe wire clip or something it would continue to probe until Z was -1", so this would probably leave a big hole at best as no contact would be made before then. I think -0.0625 is a sensible depth that probably does not need changing, but feel free to do so if you want to.

The red area below shows all required fields for the probe area (mesh) which are the size and position and are automatically calculated based on the loaded OGF. The green area shows all the un-required fields for the probe area and are not linked to the currently loaded OGF at all. They are simply loaded from you settings file no matter what OGF gets loaded. As such, these values will not change whatever OGF is loaded as you say.
AEmeshFields.png
The RPF screen should show a representation of the area you just probed, where green areas are high and red areas are low. You can adjust the threshold values if you need to provide a better contrast between red and green. I find you get the best result if you try to adjust the high threshold value to closely match the highest Z point value and the lowest threshold value to match the lowest Z point value. But you might need to experiment a bit to get a nice contrast between green and red.

Z amplification just exaggerates the high and low points to make it easier to see the bumps and troughs. So when you amplify, you should see the green areas rise and red area sink. The green area that rose in your case is an area which is higher than the rest. If it is unusually high you might want the check that it isnt a spike or incorrect value, which might affect your etch.

Hope this explains something.
http://www.autoleveller.co.uk/. Software to probe and adjust a GCode file for PCB's or any probe-able surface.

http://www.autoleveller.co.uk/cnc-probe-guide/. A short guide to setting up the probe.

-James
kcassella
Posts: 7
Joined: Sun Aug 31, 2014 7:24 pm

Re: I need clarification for a few items in the software

Post by kcassella »

Thank you for your explanation. Much more clear to me on the parameters. I did mill the PCB with the green point that I mentioned in the above post. During the milling, it did not mill any traces where the green point was showing. Is there a too far out of tolerance to mill using Autoleveller? I will admit, the Z Different is 0.1" and Z Average is 0.02" which is really bad. Just doing experiments to set a base line on what to do and not do. I milled the sacrificial board flat and probed the PCB. Now I have no green points and the PCB milled perfect. Would you say that there should be no green points or the green should only be a maximum height to get a good etch on a PCB?

Thanks for time
daedelus
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Re: I need clarification for a few items in the software

Post by daedelus »

Great that the PCB milled well 2nd time around, always good to hear.

I would say that it doesnt really matter what colour the points are in the RPF viewer, but if one point is excessively high (green) or excessively low (red) compared to its surrounding points then I usually give the board and tool a wipe down to try to remove any dust and particles, then probe the surface again. The 2nd view is usually much more uniform i.e. no spikes.
http://www.autoleveller.co.uk/. Software to probe and adjust a GCode file for PCB's or any probe-able surface.

http://www.autoleveller.co.uk/cnc-probe-guide/. A short guide to setting up the probe.

-James
kcassella
Posts: 7
Joined: Sun Aug 31, 2014 7:24 pm

Re: I need clarification for a few items in the software

Post by kcassella »

Thanks again. Everything makes sense now.
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