dxf2gcode - plasma enhancements

That’s awesome info Rod. Thanks for that advice on a proven formula. I’ll make that the default.

Any gems on length of the leadin?

Cheers- J.

I usually work on about 3mm but thicker material but on a 16mm job I set up yesterday, I used 5mm. 120 amps blows a bit of a crater on piercing! For automation, maybe 3x the kerf width might work. That would put my 16mm job at 8mm leadin which is probably better. I might change it now you made me think about it. Its a long time since I cut it.

rodw wrote: I usually work on about 3mm ....

+1
But i rarely cut anything thick, avoiding it for now!

tommylight wrote: But i rarely cut anything thick, avoiding it for now!

+1

I think that’s a good default.

But also, it’s good to have options. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the plasma journey it’s that there is no “one size fits all”.

What works for one doesn’t seem to work for another, etc etc. so long as there’s the ability to add lead ins and lead outs, arcs, perp, etc. I think that’s a good thing.

Current situation in my plasma-leads branch is:
[1] CAM baked compensated path for kerf width (tool diameter) WITH lead-in/out
[2] Leads have size driven by tool radius + start radius
[3] Two styles of Leads. Line and Arc
[4] Default lead style is Line
[5] DXF layer named "PLASMA" drives special behaviour
[6] Auto cutter compensation setting is aware of PLASMA layer naming and auto adjusts cut/offset direction based on detection of external contours and internal contours. External are CW cut with compensation to outside, Internal are CCW cut with compensation to inside. This based on my understanding that plasma swirls CW and from reading you want to be doing what is in effect climb milling against the target edge. If that swirl direction is different Northern Hemisphere v's Southern (like water going down a plughole is) then please let me know!
[7] Switches that can be part of the layer name include the following. These apply to all geometry on a layer
- Slo:1 <-- supresses lead-outs
- Sli:1 <-- supress lead-ins
- Lit:0 <-- sets lead in type arc
- Lit:1 <-- sets lead in type line
- Lot:0 <-- sets lead out type arc
- Lot:1 <-- sets lead out type line

example layer name that would suppress leadouts. Note that the :1 after PLASMA is needed to support the existing parser. So long as it is a number after the : that number can be anything.
PLASMA:1 Slo:1

ToDo: Review the gcode generation and make sure the sequencing of Z moves and torch on/off is correct.