Had a lot on and also been a bit under the weather and not been having much luck with this
Got the plasma finished enough to start testing but having all sorts of issues which I am unsure whether are me or not due to me never having used a plasma before.
First problem I have is I am just ruining nozzles in short order, seem to be fine one run and then not another. What seems to be happening is the pilot arc starts and then the plasma arc, just as it should then sometimes it seems to go all soft on the arc and then it will come good again. Problem is the nozzles is now screwed
Been doing some looking around and it seems it may be double arcing. I have tried quite a few things so far, increasing the pierce height, increasing/decreasing the air but still it happens every so often. Pics below of a nozzle that had done one or two cuts then had the problem and that was it screwed
I have also been having a load of problems with the M31 macro, getting EPID errors at times, why I have no idea but CS Labs have all of my Mach folder and are having a look to see if they can find the issue.
The computer I am using is the Via Pico that was on the wee lathe so it is loaded with all sorts of crap, think I will do a fresh install of XP and a fresh Mach and set things up from scratch to get rid of all the junk, hopefully that will help.
Also having issues with the THC, again not sure why but it looks like the signals from the THC are fine going by the arrows on the display, they change up/down extremely fast but the Z axis seems to have a lot of lag in it when under THC control so it is looking like there is a problem between the THC and the IP-S, may even be computer related so the clean install may help that.
Here is a vid showing the cut with the soft arc which I think is Double Arcing, you will see it starts fine, goes kind of soft and spread out then goes fine again for the cut.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDTFbefEEi4If anyone can suggest a fix for this I would be delighted to try it out. If I make it to the workshop tomorrow I will try reducing the current to see if that makes a difference.
Hood