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Topics - Davek0974

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91
General Mach Discussion / Safe Z (again)
« on: August 01, 2014, 10:04:42 AM »
Hi

could someone spare a minute to explain what safe-z actually does or should do in respect to a plasma table??

I have been seeing the "safe-z turned off......" message today, but it makes little sense. I have tried various settings in the safe-z screen but nothing seems to do what i would expect it to, probably my fault ;)

When is safe-z called?

I have tried the "make safe-z an incremental rise" but that seems to do little :)

Any advice would be helpful, even if its just "turn it off" as long as that is followed by how to turn it off :)

Dont forget this is a plasma so Z DRO is zeroed at the top of the workpiece NOT the top of Z travel, this effectively means that Z machine co-ords are never zeroed, currently it seems to think that machine Z zero is at table surface -4mm !!!

92
General Mach Discussion / A Get It Out Of The Way button???
« on: August 01, 2014, 09:06:27 AM »
In the standard Mach3 Plasma setup, is there a keyboard button or shortcut lurking anywhere that can be pressed to rapid the gantry to Ymax position???

My little machine is front loading and the torch parks at 0/0 which is right in the way.

Thought it would be handy to have a F button or something that just shoots the gantry to the furthest position.


Dave

93
General Mach Discussion / THC Setting Issue?
« on: July 29, 2014, 10:51:10 AM »
Hi all

after doing some nice work on my little CNC plasma table, I have now got a job which uses all of its travel capacity.

The steel is a bit bowed, probably max 4mm variation so not too bad across 625mm.

What happened on the first cut was that it started out perfectly then the cut started losing penetration intermittantly, my guess was that the THC was not tracking properly the bow in the sheet and i ended up with too high a cut.

I am stuck between it being the cheapo Proma THC i bought, or a setting issue.

In Mach i have the THC anti-dive at 90% and THC Z rate at 7%.

The rate was low because before it seemed to be overshooting, i.e. the THC loop could not keep up with torch travel and was adjusting too much, too late.

I think the Z axis screw is 2mm pitch and direct drive from a small Nema23 motor.

Maybe the rate is too low, the THC is crap, or something else is not right.

As this is my first table, I have no idea how much travel a THC is supposed to compensate for so I'm not sure where to pin the blame.

Any tips would be much appreciated.

94
General Mach Discussion / What happens when...
« on: May 01, 2014, 10:47:19 AM »
The "arc ok" signal stops mid-cut on a plasma?

This could happen on my system due to duty cycle, the plasma unit will shut off if its reached its limit, I guess this would wreck the part??

Would cycle-start get it going again or is an abort-job issue?

Thanks

95
General Mach Discussion / Controlling THC?
« on: April 25, 2014, 05:42:44 AM »
For those of us not fortunate enough to have an embedded THC system, i.e. we are using simple boxes like the PromaTHC which only output up, down & arc good signals, is there a way to control THC within Mach3 Plasma?

I have got two macros - M10 & M11 which contain one line - EndTHC() or StartTHC(), I used M10/11 as they seem to run without causing a glitch in axis movements.

In Sheetcam, we have new cutting rules to play with, I have one which turns off (supposed to) THC when it starts a small circle and back on after.

However, when the code is running, you can see the Z motor moving the torch when it is supposed to be stationary while cutting the circles.

The THC Led on the Mach screen stays on continuously regardless of the M10/11 issued, not sure if that is right or if it is indicating that the macros are indeed ineffective?

Is there a working method of doing this or have I missed a step out?

96
General Mach Discussion / Odd glitch in movement?
« on: April 24, 2014, 07:16:54 AM »
I drew up a part this morning and run it on my plasma table in thin sheet as a trial part.

It contains arcs and straight lines plus one circle, I have attached the dxf file plus a picture.

On the picture I have marked four points where the action goes from straight motion to an arc and there is a visible divot at each point.
However there is no divot at the exit from each arc - it transitions perfectly. The other bigger arrows indicate cut direction.

I can not see anything wrong in the dxf and likewise in sheetcam so it has me guessing now, any ideas???

97
General Mach Discussion / THC setting up assistance...
« on: April 10, 2014, 10:38:43 AM »
Would I be right in my belief that unless I am using the ARC-Ok input from a THC, I will not be able to turn THC on or off within Mach3???

That seems to be the way it behaves, just confirming.

98
General Mach Discussion / Breakout Board input, just a thought...
« on: April 10, 2014, 02:42:24 AM »
It seems that the standard boards are limited to the 5 input lines on a LPT port, is it not possible to use these lines as a 5 bit word, that would give us 32 possible inputs (i think) but would need a little change or secondary add-on to the breakout board plus a decoder at the Mach3 end.

Just a thought, the breakout board end id simple as it can be a secondary encoder board connected to the standard input lines, Mach on the other hand I don't know about.

99
General Mach Discussion / THC Codes upset corners???
« on: April 03, 2014, 10:49:21 AM »
In preparation for fitting a THC unit, I thought I'd try adding the M101/M102 THC on/off codes to my sheetcam post.

I have a test job, a 50mm square that has 5mm loops on the corners to keep nice sharp corners, however with the THC M codes added, when I dry-run this code in Mach3 Plasma it runs to a corner, stops, cuts the loop, stops, cuts the next edge then repeats on all corners??

Is there a reason it does this or is Mach not set correctly, surely just adding THC on/off codes should not upset the smoothness of the code?

Without the codes it runs smoothly????

100
General Mach Discussion / Button Reprogramming...
« on: April 02, 2014, 05:07:56 AM »
I have a "Origin" button on my plasma screen, it sets all the work DRO's to zero from my pendant.

Is there a way to have this button also press the "Regen Toolpath" button after it does its reset??

This would stop getting soft limit errors when using the pendant to start a job.

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