The Bantam Tools Desktop Milling Machine Software comes equipped with several conductive probing routines to help you to set up jobs faster, avoid unnecessary mistakes, and create an accurate preview in the software. These automated routines will reliably locate the X, Y, and Z position of your stock in the Desktop CNC Milling Machine and allow you to configure work offsets when flipping a part or machining in multiple operations.
It’s important to note that the majority of these routines are designed to work with conductive materials (aluminum, brass, etc.). If you’re milling non-conductive material, such as plastics or wood, you can reliably locate your material by using our right-angle bracket and bracket probing routine or by manually “zeroing out the machine” by jogging the spindle to the desired location and using our manual probing routines.
Machine Work Offsets
In the Bantam Tools Software, users set both the position of the stock in the machine and the position of their file relative to the stock. With these two locations identified, the software is able to create an accurate preview of the job.
Let’s review how these positions relate to one another:
- The machine bed origin position is the front left corner of the bed.
- The material position is relative to this machine bed origin.
- The plan position is relative to the top left corner of the material.
Be sure to keep this in mind when you program your CAM.
Material Location Probing Routines
Material location routines allow you to locate your material in the Desktop CNC Milling Machine. By default, our software aligns a milling file to the top left corner of your material. If this is where you configured your work coordinate system in CAM or where you want to mill your SVG file, then you only need to run a material location routine. You can also manually position a plan relative to the material or utilize the plan placement probing routines below.
Here is a list of our standard material probing routines:
Plan Placement Probing Routines
Plan placement routines allow you to align your plan to a point other than the default location of the top left corner of your stock. In other words, if you’ve set your work offset for a plan other than the top, front, left corner, you’ll need to use one of our plan placement routines in addition to the material probing routine in order to properly align your plan.
It’s also important to note that the plan placement routines won’t update your material placement in the Bantam Tools software. These routines only update the plan placement relative to the material. If you’ve adjusted your stock for a new operation, you’ll need to reprobe the stock using the material probing routines and then run your plan placement probing routine to ensure the software’s preview displays properly.
Here is a list of our standard plan placement probing routines:
Advanced Plan Placement Probing Routines
The subscription package of the Bantam Tools software comes with the advanced boss, bore, and rectangular probing routines (in addition to the automated routines included in the base package). These plan placement routines help you to set up jobs even faster.
Here is a list of our advanced plan placement probing routines: