Z axis

That's the plan, I will try at some point this weekend....I was reading some forums and will be trying their suggestions. I should have waited and saved up for a Hypertherm...

thanks for everyone help up to this point.

Throwing in the towel with this Mesa thcad-10 , And plasmac, Very disappointing!!

Sorry we couldn't help you.

motal2004 wrote:

Throwing in the towel with this Mesa thcad-10 , And plasmac, Very disappointing!!

Yes we are sorry to see you go too. It looks like you have got through the Plasmac setup but have hit the wall with getting your plasma machine to work. Don't expect that to be any easier on another controller or THC.

As you don't have an ArcOK signal on your machine, Plasmac attempts to fake one for you. It does that by turning on an ArcOK signal when the arc voltage excennds the low volt threshold. That threshold needs to be high enough to confirm a good arc has been triggered. Around 60 volts is a good starting point.

My plasma machine does have an arcok singal output...
I will re wire my Cnc pigtail to raw voltage and connect the arcOK signal in to the Mesa 7i96 board, and try again.
So putting the following line in my hal file
setp hm2_7i96.0.encoder.00.scale -1
setp hm2_7i96.0.encoder.00.filter 1
setp hm2_7i96.0.encoder.00.counter-mode 1
What’s the counter-mode for?

It sets the encoder into unidirectional mode so it only counts the rising edge of phase A and phase B is ignored

Setting the encoder counter into up/down mode instead of the default quadrature mode
so it can count frequency on its "A' input

(B is not ignored, it will change the count direction but if unconnected
the default direction is down, also if the "B" input is not brought out,
it will also default to counting down)

I thought you were having the weekend off !

motal2004 wrote:

My plasma machine does have an arcok singal output...
I will re wire my Cnc pigtail to raw voltage and connect the arcOK signal in to the Mesa 7i96 board, and try again.

I think you said there were resistors in line with the raw arc voltage. Make sure you deduct that value from the resistance used to scale the THCAD. eg if there is a total of 200 k resistance and your scale calculation says to use a 3.9M resistor, you use 3.7M instead.
I'd also suggest you aim for a full scale of 200 volts until you get that Hypertherm! The maths is in the THCAD manual

PCW wrote:

(B is not ignored, it will change the count direction but if unconnected
the default direction is down, also if the "B" input is not brought out,
it will also default to counting down)

Is that why we set the scale to -1