I am working on using a ball bar with the System > B89 Utilities > B89 Ball Bar routine.

I have no problem using this in manual mode, but in the hopes of saving some time I want to use the DCC mode as well.

The path that the machine makes when I use the DCC mode is often interfering with my ball bar though.  It has hit the stem on the bar which is easy to understand, but it has also made the path go through a sphere during the move from the last point retract out to the clearance move.

I read the help file and it shows the steps that the software asks for, but the help file does not describe the expected positions for the access and clearance positions.  I have tried a few different access positions and the paths generated are having the mentioned interference issues.

my assumptions about this utility are:

move to the sphere 1 access position (put the probe tip about 10mm above the top of the sphere similar to when you cal a new tip on your ref sphere)

touch the sphere one time (I move straight down in Z and touch the sphere where by eye it looks to be top center)

move to a sphere 1 clearance position (I move pretty far up in Z, then away from my ball bar to a place where there isn't anything on the table)

move to a sphere 2 clearance position (I move to a similar looking place where I know a linearly interpolated path from sphere 1 clearance to sphere 2 clearance points will not hit anything)

move to a sphere 2 access point (same as above I position directly above the sphere about 10mm up)

touch sphere 2 (same thing I move straight down in Z and make the touch)

then DCC takes over.

at this point I have had an issue where the first hit touched the stem of the ball bar.  or the routine goes well and completes sphere 2, then goes to sphere 1, makes all the touches successfully, but then collides with the sphere when going back to the sphere 1 clearance position (when this happens the machine discards the data even though all 5 sphere touches were done and you can manually touch 5 more replacements)

So, right now I'm not having much luck with DCC ball bar data gathering, but I suspect that if I had a little more instruction about the expected setup points and what the path is going to do it would improve.

I do have my sphere size, and stem diameter setup correctly.

I also assume that if you oversize the stem a little that this would be a good idea.  The stem on my bar is a cone from where the ball mounts out to the main shaft.  I have entered a shaft diameter about 2mm larger than the diameter at the ball interface.