Messages

181

General Mach Discussion / Re: Rounding the corners

« on: July 05, 2016, 05:53:01 PM »

It may also be possible to increase the acceleration if you decrease the maximum velocity...

What is your fastest g1, g2 and g3 feedrate?

Reduce your maximum velocity to a little above this and try to tune your acceleration upwards....this may work a little given the acceleration is linear (normally.... I think you can adjust the acceleration with a kflop controller to be different a little... but not with mach3 or mach4)

182

General Mach Discussion / Re: Rounding the corners

« on: July 05, 2016, 05:48:24 PM »

I know anything about servo drives, but with a stepper motor you could increase the voltage to the drive and it would improve the velocity and acceleration.

The other thing is feedrate is dictated by the tool you are using.... how many cutting edges it has.... hence if you are using a 4 tooth cutting tool....if you change to a two tooth cutting tool, you can half the velocity.... but this won't improve your cutting time.... but may allow you to do a slower finishing cut?

Others will be able to advise too....give them time to review and respond as I am not an expert here.

183

General Mach Discussion / Re: Rounding the corners

« on: July 05, 2016, 02:12:59 PM »

What feedrate is the machine actually running at (is 2800 the maximum axis velocity, ie g00, or is it your feedrate... ie g01, g02 or g03?)

At 2800mm/min, your velocity is approximately 46.6mm/sec, so with an acceleration of 200 mm/s/s, it would take 0.23 of a second for motion to go from 46.6mm/sec to zero or visa versa.

Hence the distance traveled would be 5.25mm....

Hence you either need higher acceleration or a lower feedrate.... as your acceleration is normally fixed.... I'd suggest lowering your feedrate in the corners via the post-processor or whatever software you are using to create your gcode.

184

General Mach Discussion / Re: Pro Cut CNC plasma table help needed?

« on: July 05, 2016, 02:03:26 PM »

Within mach3 the torch fire is normally controlled by output #1 (although any output can be used).... then on the config drop down menu, select ports and pins, and on the outputs tab, select output 1, and input the port and pin number, then go to the mill tab (2nd last one), and check that m3 controls output 1 (spindle clockwise), then go to the inputs and select THCOK, and select the corresponding port and pin numbers for the inputs used.

Everything should work fine then..... if you have problems, upload your XML file and someone will have a look at it for you as there could be other things that catch you out settings wise, but it would take ages to give you information that has taken years to a mass on Mach and setups and what does what.

185

General Mach Discussion / Re: Pro Cut CNC plasma table help needed?

« on: July 05, 2016, 01:54:39 PM »

The pinout for the pmx interface is here

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.hypertherm.com/Xnet/library/library.jsp%3Ffile%3DHYP103957&ved=0ahUKEwimvZ_S8dzNAhVpL8AKHcgoCo0QFggbMAA&usg=AFQjCNE3T2d_5tkjgBs6m4eqKSqyzAVGTw&sig2=sRF6RUlXKPB-GmSHVdMWBQ

186

General Mach Discussion / Re: Pro Cut CNC plasma table help needed?

« on: July 05, 2016, 01:48:47 PM »

Yes you will use the arc transfer input.  Basically it tells the motion controller when the arc has transferred and motion can begin (delay for pierce or drop to cut height etc)

The torch fire will need to go via a relay, and the arc transfer to an input.

The input for me should really go via either an optoisolator or via a relay (not my recommendation... but it will work), the reason is the arc transfer is done via the closing of a relay inside the pmx65 so if you put 5v into your pmx it is more likely to be affected by electrical noise on a 5v TTL signal, but if you input 24v into your pmx65 for example it is highly unlikely that noise will be great enough to create sufficient noise for the signal to change state.

I would suggest an optoisolator with a couple of resistors to limit current flow to the optoisolator specs (about 10ma normally), you could also use a reed relay (much more high speed than a standard 24v relay.

187

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: PID control proportional to velocity

« on: June 30, 2016, 03:21:21 PM »

An old post I know, but just spotted it.

An Ethernet smooth stepper has 256 step pwm output available relative to blended velocity, this can be programmed via a 256 point table to give a linear or exponential curve or whatever other profile you want.

It's intention was to output for laser (or maybe plasma) although I don't think it's been well utilised as it was not documented well previous.

Check out the website and forum searching for pwm and it'll come up from the last year of discussions.

Rob

188

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 - Code for Holding Motion Until THC Sends a Signal

« on: June 26, 2016, 09:39:02 AM »

you are on the right track, unfortunately I'm not your man when it comes to lua and mach4 unfortunately...

I'd suggest M-codes are the way to hold this motion inhibit (whether its within M03 or M08)

I know there was a bit of a "bug" (maybe it was designed that way... ) within Mach3 where as whenever you use any other Mcode than M3 to turn the plasma torch on the THC functions don't or won't work within mach.  Now I know that this does not apply to you as all your THC is within the hypertherm box, but its just a message for anyone else reading this in the future .... if and when THC becomes available in the ESS (more when ass I know it will be done).

Rob

189

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 - Code for Holding Motion Until THC Sends a Signal

« on: June 26, 2016, 08:50:56 AM »

How is the thc up and down and g00 and g01. Z axis motion controlled

190

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 - Code for Holding Motion Until THC Sends a Signal

« on: June 26, 2016, 08:49:58 AM »

Yes, you could do it via script, but I suspect that you would need to do the freehold within the m3 (torch fire) macro, so the sequence of events is

Move to xy pierce point (g00 x%% y%%)
Touch off (g31)
Reset z to switch or ohmic offset(g92)
Move to pierce height(g00 z%%)
Then the m3 torch fire macro

Which will need to have a wait statement,

Before pierce delay (g04 p%%)
And drop to cut height

Rob