How to probe for point cloud to make surface in Rhino

[AvB]

Hey guys I'm new to the forum and have very recently changed over from Mach3 to UCCNC (and huge thanks to Balazs and Gerry who've helped enormously ... and to my engineer friend Geoff who was able to complete the installation - I couldn't have done it without such help).

I am taking unevenly shaped pieces of wood (old timber slabs) to make signs from them. We want to leave the natural uneven shape, and engrave lettering on them. So I would like to be able to probe and create a point cloud from the surfaces. How would you recommend doing this? Gerry suggested using the autoleveler plugin, but I don’t understand how you would use that.

Firstly I need to have some sort of UCCNC plugin to create the file of points from probing a specified area. And also if anyone has any ideas I'm using Rhino and could use some advice on a method/ software etc that can drape a surface over the point cloud.

[Robertspark]

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=34

[ger21]

That example video is old, and I believe the process is a little different now??

Andrew, here's a (probably) simpler way than using the autoleveler plugin.
Open Mach3, and go to Wizards, and run the Digitize Wizard. When finished, go to Edit G-code, and add an M41 before the M30 at the end.

Code: Select all

G0X0Y0Z0
M41
M30

Then save the file, so you can load it into UCCNC.
Load it into UCCNC, and run the g-code to digitize your part and create the point cloud. By default, the point cloud is save in C:\UCCNC\Example_Codes\ as digitize.txt

That's all there is to it.

(I found an omission in the 2017 screenset that doesn't allow you to change the path. If your UCCNC is not installed in C:\UCCNC, let me know, and I'll tell you what you need to do)

In Rhino, load the point cloud and use the Patch command. Watch this video, starting at about 6:10.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTubIMSMjOw

[AvB]

Ah, great, I will try that thanks Gerry! Due to the new configuration my spindle won't work in Mach3 but that won't affect probing. Cheers. (I still need to buy the probe).

[cncdrive]

You can start collecting probe points using the M40 macro and can stop collection and save to file with the M41 macro.
The file and point file parameters you can set on the Tools/Probe page of the UCCNC.

And you can use the Autoleveler plugin to surface map a g-code file to a probed surface.