Plasma/Mesa Guru's

Thanks John, I will have a look at one of those center punches. I hadn't even thought of them. I have seen plenty of people use the air scribes, but this sounds like it could be a bit quicker. You should be able to drop that down with an air cylinder quite quickly. As apposed to gently lowering an air scribe.

I will go change that touch off file now. I haven't even looked at it since I started using it.

Very cool thank you again.

Austin

I am afraid that is a bit over my head.... but I do get that a parallel port just can't do what the high speed pci card from mesa can do. I am definitely going to have to consider switching my other machines over to the mesa cards. I may have to wait until my bank accounts grow a little bit though.

In other news, I had the speed in the touchoff subroutine file at F10, switched it to F60 and now the touch off takes about a second or less........ it's pretty much instant compared to how it was.

I seem to be running into another issue. Is there a way to change the speed at which the Z axis jumps from the THC being in control and not. I am loosing position there badly. Not too noticeable on a part with two pierces, but when there is thirty it is a real issue.

It seems to me that when the THC is in control of the Z its running around the part and everything is fine, then when the torch is turned off it tries to Jump to the position it thinks it should be at and I am loosing steps there. So with an inch of rapid travel height, after the first cut it is pretty close to an inch, then after the 4th or 5th cut when it has gradually gotten closer to the part to the point where the torch is dragging across the steel plate being cut. I also seem to be experiencing quite a bit of overshoot with the Z on THC. I put a flag on dual shaft stepper I am using for the Z and the entire time the part is cutting it is just fluttering back and forth. So the dead band I tried to put in isn't really doing much. With the Z loosing position so bad I am unable to use the Z inhibit when cornering. It seems that it too want to jump the Z to a new position, which looses the Z position. I am currently running a 425oz Nema 23 motor with a 10tpi screw on the Z. Which means the Z motor really has to turn fast to move the Z much. I have another Z axis that I was thinking would probably make a pretty good difference on my setup. It has a 2tpi multi start Kerk screw in it. If I can find the time to make a mount for it this weekend I will give it a shot. But any ideas would be helpful.

I really wish that I had my machine in my own garage... at the moment I have to drive across town to get any of the info you need. I will do that at some point today.

One very noticeable thing that happens is when I click the THC box on and off after cutting a part the Z tries to jump about an inch or so. It never gets to move anywhere near how far it wants to move as it looses steps on it way. You can hear the motor getting about a zillion pulses per second.

I will be grabbing one of my GCode files and writting down the Version of EMC2. Anything else I could get while I am there to make diagnostics a little easier just let me know.

Pretty sure theres a bug in the THC comp that may cause a jump on torch-off. John is fixing this I believe.