We bought and build our own machine that works just fine except for a view points here and there. We are using a thermotech 1650 series 3 plasma machine with automatic thc and air only, we are cutting mild steel and thinking of stainless, I do dwg. in Auto Cad Lt then save them as dxf files and then open them in sheet cam and then sheet cam saves a tap file in mach 3 from where I do my cutting proses. I would like to know where the earth should be on a waterbed, I shall add a photo of my machine, I am using fine cut consumables and do get excellent results, but i can only pierce 9 time then mach return on a m01 optional stop, where do I make a adjustment to increase the no. of piercings. My next problem is that sheet cam does not recognise fonts like stencil although it opens the dxf it only display new roman, also the pierce delay is not working or not responding to the setting made, example, when I cut 2mm cold rolled steel I set pears delay to 4 sec. and that is good but when I cut 10 mm plate it refuses to delay I can set it to 10 sec. it starts moving the second the torch starts.

 Appreciate the help.

Marshall

Hi,

i cant comment on the waterbed until i see a pic of your machine but i may be able to help with the other questions,

i dont know what post processor you are using in sheetcam but this will be where you problem is for the m01 optional stop, i think some posts have a variable in them which stops the machine to allow you to check the consumables before continuing, i think it is called "piercelimit" have a look in you post this may be the problem, the post can be edited using wordpad.

the trouble with fonts will be to do with how the cad program is exporting them, i cant remember the details but it think its something like sheetcam wont recognise splines only curves and so if your cad program exports text as splines sheetcam will not pick them up. Personallyt i use corel draw for anything with text in it and it has an option to "convert to curves" which solves the problem but the export is not very good, also check out sheetcam tng, it has the ability to put text into a part.

As for the pierce delay i found with sheetcam that the pierce delay number i put in didnt appear to correspond to seconds, my value for 6mm plate is 1500 i think, try a big value and see if it makes any difference, also if you are using a thc sheetcam may not be the problem, usually the thc uses an arc good signal and puts in its own pierce delay after the arc good signal or use a dleay in mach so the problem could also be here.

hope ive helpsed a bit not just confused you!

Thanks for the help, the pierce delay problem has been solved, I went for a higher value and it worked, also the pierce limmit is solved i set it to a 100 and its working just fine, thanks again, I wil try to post some pics.

the only problem that remains are the font problem in tng and sheet cam.

Time for Sabbath and that means rest and no worries for he next 24 hrs

thanks
Marshall