15m Industrial Plasma Cutter

Do you guys agree with Tommy's suggestion of Lam technologies DS1076 for X and Y axis drivers and DS1044 for Z axis?

Does the DS1044 work with a Nema 23?

Hello everyone,

I'm about to order the driver but there are a few options, is there a specific reason that Lam was suggested or would anything of suitable quality be ok? Also, does the Lam driver need a UDP30 interface?

Thanks.

Thanks for that, I've ordered them.

I'm now thinking about the cabling for 12m. Do you guys have any ideas on whether it would be easy to make a really long torch , or to get the torch traveling too and get a really long gas/power cables. I'm trying to avoid running cables overhead.

Jarman wrote:

Thanks for that, I've ordered them.

I'm now thinking about the cabling for 12m. Do you guys have any ideas on whether it would be easy to make a really long torch , or to get the torch traveling too and get a really long gas/power cables. I'm trying to avoid running cables overhead.

I thought that was discussed earlier in your thread. I think I'd get the plasma cutter to ride on the gantry. The plasma machines account for torch lead length (eg vary pressure) but that is based on fixed length torch leads.

Thanks Rod,

It was discussed earlier and I had in my head that for thin material, speed is important so I should try to cut down the weight of the gantry, hence not mounting the plasma. Especially since my gantry is only 1.25m wide, the extra weight of the plasma would be quite a large relative increase.

I have looked at Hypertherm's website and they sell a variety of torch cable lengths so I'm thinking that if the box was half way down the bed, I would only need cable for 6m of travel and this 10.6m torch would do:

www.hypermaxonline.com/Hypertherm-088168...ft-Lead-_p_1054.html

I'm also going to need wiring from my drives, motion control etc. so I'm thinking that I could just have a pc, control box and torch box halfway down and then a power track capable of housing them all.

Well, that sounds like it would work then. One thing I have learnt is you don't need much hardware. Here is a 7i96 with everything you need. I would just add another THCAD to this for ohmic sensing.


So one option would be to mount this and the LAM drivers and their power supplies on the gantry. Say you were going with 70 volts with their system. you could put a torroidal power supply in the middle of the table where your torch lead enters, all you would need to run to the gantry was a 55 volt (approx) AC power lead, the torch and a network cable up to the gantry. The PC could live anywhere within the ethernet 100 metre maximum limit.

When I built my table, all my sensors and switches were mounted on the gantry anyway.

It will be interesting to hear Tommy's thoughts.

I was going to go for a Hypertherm XP45