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Offline RICH

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Re: Physical buttons for plasma
« Reply #350 on: May 09, 2016, 06:07:57 AM »
Hood,

Here is what my friend did for ventilation using a small axial fan. The plasma is in his basement and the smoke alarms would go off.
His machine is smaller in size bed around 3 x 4'. Above the  of the machine is a plenum, just thin sheet metal with the outlet located in the center and 6"
duct to axial fan which exhausts to the outside. A clear plastic curtain on each side which can be drawn up and down ( same as one would use in the house )
can be drawn down to enclose the table perimeter. Works great.

I know that you don't desire wireless but the X box is used and works great as the table is away from the pc and pc is also away from the plasma machine.
Say 8 to 10' feet or so. By the way he has a water bed below the grate.

Got to go. Back in a few hours,

RICH
 
« Last Edit: May 09, 2016, 06:13:41 AM by RICH »

Offline Hood

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Re: Physical buttons for plasma
« Reply #351 on: May 09, 2016, 08:38:41 AM »
Thanks Rich,
 think I will be going for downdraught and likely wont have water either. Bit more work involved in the downdraught but likely less messy and safer as I will be doing mainly stainless and Alu.

Regarding the X Box, not going to happen I am afraid, stuck in my ways I am afraid. ;)

Got a few mins to try the homing again with different settings and I think it is going to be a bit too sensitive to current values, too low and it can think it has homed just whilst accelerating and too high and it would push thinner material. That might not be too much of an issue as I will hardly ever do any less than 3mm but you never know.
I could drop the accel on the homing routine and it would probably be fine, will see how it goes.

Saw someone with an air cylinder and a switch, could have been Dave? It looked to work well so may investigate that further

Hood

Offline Davek0974

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Re: Physical buttons for plasma
« Reply #352 on: May 09, 2016, 09:00:55 AM »
Yes, the pneumatic fired switch/probe was my brainchild but modified and developed with the help of a few on here ;) It does actually work very very well, I can get IHS on the thinnest metal without distortion as the switch triggers on about 10gm I think it was. The rest is just a little 25mm stroke cylinder, a valve and the switch plus some macro code to do the IHS - this takes the routine away from SheetCam and makes any changes to the switch offset a one-step alteration - it just uses the switch offset value on the settings screen :)

Here's a vid of it working... https://youtu.be/FV6WpuQjFE0


I was wondering about the current-sense method not being delicate enough, it only seems to appear on the big toys that spend all day hacking thick plate.
« Last Edit: May 09, 2016, 09:03:00 AM by Davek0974 »

Offline Hood

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Re: Physical buttons for plasma
« Reply #353 on: May 09, 2016, 03:14:30 PM »
Thanks, will maybe end up doing something along those lines if the current value homing proves too much for thinner stuff.
My tests at the moment are not great as I do not have the metal sitting on a steady platform, I might rig up something a bit more solid at the weekend and get some further testing done.

I have also decided to put another motor on the opposite side of the gantry rather than have the shaft through it. Thinking  I will just use the follower mode for the servo drive as it is very configurable and should be reliable.

Hood

Offline Hood

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Re: Physical buttons for plasma
« Reply #354 on: May 14, 2016, 02:16:45 PM »
 I got the brackets for the slave axis motor made up and fitted through the week, also got it all wired with the exception of some I/O in the drive.
I was originally just going to use the follower mode in the drive and connect it directly to the Y axis drive which would be the master. However I took a look at the CSMIO plugin and read a wee bit about it and it has a nice feature.
What you can do is have two switches on either side of the gantry and you can then set in the plugin to measure the difference between switches. You home the axis then go back into the plugin and you will now see the difference in distance and can then enable the plugin to use the difference when homing.
Best bit however is if you find your gantry is not quite square to the other axis you can adjust the distance in the plugin and it will offset one end of the axis by the amount you have added or subtracted from the home switch distance.

Waiting on a few prox's arriving so have not been able to test it out yet but hopefully they will arrive next week.

Also got all my panel buttons configured in the macropump, have 9 all together that go via the CSMIO/Mach and the other two are Control which starts the computer and then also powers the 24v for CSMIO etc. The other button is a Limit Override button as my limits work external to Mach via my Safety relay so to back off a limit I need a physical Override button.

Anyway the buttons I have via the Macropump are
Start
Hold
Stop
THC On/Off
Reference
Reset X  (Fault Reset)
Reset Y  (Fault Reset)
Reset Z (Fault Reset)
Touch Off material (For doing the homing routine in the servo drive)

Got to try and get the boatyard pinned down to shifting my cabin, I can then get the 3 phase in and start making the tray/extraction/support bars.

Really looking forward to the day I can actually start cutting some metal :D




Hood

Offline Davek0974

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Re: Physical buttons for plasma
« Reply #355 on: May 14, 2016, 02:44:31 PM »
Sounding good Hood :)

Also an apt thread as it looks like i'll be needing some physical buttons for my mill conversion project, thinking of using arcade style joysticks for X, Z & Y jogging, plus the usual cycle start, hold, stop etc. Will be a similar setup I think as i'll be using the CSMIO/A unit.

Are the Macropump details in this thread?

:)

Offline Hood

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Re: Physical buttons for plasma
« Reply #356 on: May 14, 2016, 02:50:44 PM »
The CSMIO controllers have a kind of inbuilt Modbus for the I/O. It means you can use the I/O as normal in Mach if you want but obviously there is not enough I/O in Mach so you can also use the I/O direct from scripts or brains.
I do most of the I/O via the macropump, here is what I have in the plasma macropump.

Cycle = GetInBit(91,0)
Hold = GetInBit(91,1)
Halt =GetInBit(91,2)
THC = GetInBit(91,8)
Touch = GetInBit(91,3)
Ref = GetInBit(91,4)
ResetX = GetInBit(91,5)
ResetY = GetInBit(91,6)
ResetZ = GetInBit(91,7)

If THC Then
DoOemButton (123)
Sleep 500
End If

If Cycle  Then
DoOemButton (1000)
End If

If Hold Then
DoOemButton (1001)
End If

If Halt Then
DoOemButton (1003)
End If

If Ref Then
DoOemButton( 1024 )
While IsMoving()
Wend
DoOemButton( 1023 )
While IsMoving()
Wend
DoOemButton( 1022 )
While IsMoving()
Wend
End If

If Touch Then
SetOutBit (90,8)
Sleep 500
ResetOutBit(90,8)
End If


If ResetX Then
SetOutBit (90,3)
Sleep 500
ResetOutBit(90,3)
End If

If ResetY Then
SetOutBit (90,4)
Sleep 500
ResetOutBit(90,4)
End If

If ResetZ Then
SetOutBit (90,5)
Sleep 500
ResetOutBit(90,5)
End If


There is info on the CS Lab site on how to use the I/O you will find it here.

http://www.cs-lab.eu/en/artykul-128-Digital_and_analog_IOs__configuration__its_easy.html

Offline Davek0974

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Re: Physical buttons for plasma
« Reply #357 on: May 14, 2016, 03:05:21 PM »
Nice, thanks for that.

Offline mc

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Re: Physical buttons for plasma
« Reply #358 on: May 14, 2016, 03:14:13 PM »
OK, I'm going to have to ask. How does the magnetic breakaway for the torch get aligned?

I've been wondering about it since I seen the video, but it's not clear in the video. I'm guessing there's some kind of tapered locating tabs, that allow it to locate positively, yet still breakaway if hit from the side?

Offline Hood

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Re: Physical buttons for plasma
« Reply #359 on: May 14, 2016, 03:41:14 PM »
Dave
 remember to have Pots for Feed and Spindle Overrides :)

mc
There are 8 magnets so it more or less aligns itself. If I had glued in the magnets it would have been perfect but I milled pockets with a small ledge at the base so that the magnet could not get pulled out, that brought a problem where the plates could move very slightly as the magnetic pull was not as strong as it would have been if they were touching. Solution was to bore two 5mm holes in the lower plate and thread the top plate and fit setscrews that I had domed on the lathe.

Hood