Zeiss CMM's use their own probe head designs or ?

About 2 years ago I passed up a late 90's Zeiss with automatic probe change and rack at live auction for $500 because it was missing the fiberglass cover over the Z axis ! But now realize maybe I should have bought it just for the probe head and rack if nothing else. Don't remember if it was motorized head or not, but it probably was. I just remember none of it looked Renishaw.

My Zeiss CMM experience is from a couple decades ago, but at that time Zeiss used an analogue probe head of their own manufacture. The Zeiss folks liked to describe the probe head as a "self-contained mini-CMM" whose measurement values were added to main-machine values within the operating software.

At about that time, Zeiss marketed Steiffelmayer-manufactured (not sure if I've spelled that name correctly) CMMs under the Zeiss name -- after fitting a Zeiss probehead and adapt-a-kitting Zeiss software to the SM drives -- to fill-out the lower-precision, large-envelope end of their range.

The little Zeiss experience I've had has been with scanning CMMs, which would not work with normal TP2 or TP6 probes. Are all Zeiss CMMs scanning type or are some standard point type?

The Zeiss CMMs from the mid-late 90's such as the Eclipse line could be purchased to employ the Zeiss-designed ST head, or the Renishaw heads. I think there was a small interface board that allowed the adaptation to Renishaw, as I recall. The ST head is a piezo-electric sensing head, rather than using switches, and whatever else might have been typical in the CMM probe heads at the time. My company purchased a new Eclipse in '95 or '96, when they had recently introduced them and were promoting them with some "deals". I think the piezo technology works very well, but the heads are (were?) expensive if you crashed them (like a local service guy did - go figure). I think the stand-alone cost for new head was $14.9K, with trade-in more like $5K. Nice machine, lots of useful measurement features, but the standard software (U-Mess) even on the DCC units was not capable then of importing off-line generated anything. Teaching at the machine was the programming method.

Zeiss CMM's have always scared me as they seem more dependent on the mother ship than any other make. And the mother ship is the most arrogant and expensive to deal with of any of them from what I can tell, so not a good one to be joined at the hip with. Knew a guy that bought one of the Zeiss portable "shop floor" CMM's a few year ago and he has poured mega bucks into the upkeep of that thing.