Hello,
our company have build a few plasma machines under mach3 control, using the Purelogic PLCM E3 controller and their THC, this works pretty good.
We also made our own screenset for it, completely from scratch with all kind of macro's etc.
In the past I had some issues with G31 in a macro moving the wrong axis. Instead of Z-down it was moving X to the right.
I found out that the button that switches between work and machine coordinates was giving this problems, the machine had to be on work coordinates. So I removed the button from the screenset and changed the homing routine to have it always set to work coordinates.
If GetOemLED(16) Then
DoOemButton(256)
End If
Since then never had any problems with G31 on any of our machines again.
Now we have a new customer, and the machine sometimes has this problem again.
We have a M900 macro for finding the plate surface, move to ignition height, start the torch, move to pierce height, wait during pierce delay and then move to cutheight.
This is our G31 line. It tells the machine to probe to a maximum depth we want, at a certain speed.
Code "G0 G53 Z" &ProbeStart 'Move to startheight of probing, in machine coordinates
ProbingMax = CurrZ - ProbingDepth 'Max probing movement based on current Z-position
SetUserLED(Platesearch, 1) 'Set Platesearch active LED, to override lifter error in macropump
SetUserLED(O_Plasma_Safety_Relay, 1) 'Enable the plasma safety relay
sleep(200) 'Wait for the relay to be enabled
Code "G90 G31 Z" &ProbingMax & "F" & ProbingFeed 'Probe with max movement and probing speed
Sometimes after a few parts, the machine suddenly starts searching for the plate on the X-axis instead of the Z-axis. The machine then goes all the way left to the hardware limitswitch, and gives a Cypress Enable Error in Variable: GetCtxtr... because it can't finish the macro.
Why is it sometimes moving in the wrong direction? In the past it was the button work/machine coordinates, but that is already eliminated. What else can cause these errors?