Time of flight sensor for Z probe?

I upgraded the hotend of my Kossel Mini over the weekend to an E3D v6 using RMD's effector from Thingiverse (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1134299). While I was at it I switched over to using a opto switch for the z probe. While getting that to work I remembered the ToF sensor I saw in an Adafruit video (https://www.adafruit.com/product/3317) and wondered if it would work as a Z probe. So far I haven't been able to find any mention of someone getting it to work, or much mention at all. Has anyone experimented with something like this? I figure the accuracy would be the biggest problem. But since I use a fairly optically consistent build platform (BuildTak) maybe it'll be good enough.

That sensor has only been out for 2 months or so... You will be the first!

That seems like a really nice solution. Hopefully DC42 can weigh in here as he's got experience developing the IR sensor. Are there any particular advantages to this over IR?

Nice idea, so I took a look at the datasheets for those sensors. The VL6180X is the more suitable of the two sensors available because it designed for shorter range applications. The minimum range for that one is about 10mm. Given that the speed of light in vacuum is 1 foot per nanosecond, and in air only a little lower, if we use 10mm range then the time of flight is about 20/300ns = 67ps. We need a resolution and repeatability (but not accuracy) of about 10um, so that's about 67fs. Sounds very hard to achieve. And sure enough, Table 18 on the sensor datasheet says that the noise in the reading @ 50mm range is 2mm. So way too high for this application.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].