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Alright I think that puts us on the right track.

I wasnt really too attached to QtPlasmaC, I just saw the word "plasma" and selected it. Also thought it looked nice.

I did previously create a config with Axis GUI as well but it was more so for testing the motors out, so I will switch back to that and see what I can do.

Thanks! Hopefully my next post is of a finished machine.

OK, then why use QtPlasmaC?
Not helping, here is some help
-Make a normal config for QtPlasmaC
-Do not use input pin for Z home
-Probably edit the ini file and set everything with Home_xxxxxx to 0 <<<this should do immediate homing with no regard to position or switch
-use normally
BUT, this will still try to probe the material and error out...pretty sure something can be done in HAL to wire probe in to probe out, that might just work.
Yeah, still not usable, sorry, typing before thinking, so the simple solution is use Axis GUI.

We just didn't think it was necessary for a tube cutter, and at the start of this whole process we thought we were making it easier on ourselves by omitting it entirely. Also to save some money on all the electronics that go along with an additional axis, as we are working with a tight-ish budget.

Its pretty much only designed to do 1in OD because its for our universities FSAE team, to make the chassis in house, but should be capable of 0.75" - 3" tubing.

There is a Z axis technically but its manually adjustable just to set torch height for different size tubes. Also there is a front chuck of sorts that holds the tube about 2inches from the torch so the material is well supported up to the torch.

Is there any way you can think of to take out the Z-axis related ops? I was trying to figure out how to contact you directly actually because you are the one person I have seen do tube cutters in this forum.

Let me know if you have any advice for us...

Thanks.

Forgot to add, tubes are 76mm and 193mm in diameter, if the scale is not apparent from pictures.

Nkbhvid wrote:

Welectron do not sell mesa products any longer

They do sell Mesa stuff, just type Mesa in the searchbox on their website.

Make 2 configs, one with 4th axis and one without.
Do not ever connect or disconnect motors while machine is powered on.
Does the spindle have an encoder?

unknown wrote:

Try the wheezy ISO from the downloads page,

This is very good advice.
And never mind the 2 core comment, not important in your case.

Pictures of what thing actually cut :

I have to ask, WHY ???
You can not use a plasma without Z axis, except very close to the chuck and with good quality tubes.
I have built 3 by now, all have Z axis and THC, one of them built a huge construction, see here:
forum.linuxcnc.org/show-your-stuff/35306-cnc-plasma-tube-cutter

This is a good thread!

My probing support is in sort of a middle ground, niether fully manual, nor fully automatic. My automatic touchoff probes, and my manual touchoffs, all get logged to a file, courtesy LOGAPPEND/LOG/LOG_CLOSE. For a long time that log wasn't used -- it was just a byproduct of some sample code I'd started with over a decade ago.

But earlier this year I had a need to match the machines coordinate system to my workpiece. ((It was easier than trying to get it clamped down in perfect alignment.) So I wrote some (external) code to pull data from that probe logfile. The code took the last couple of touchoff points, and calculated the rotation angle of a line drawn through those points. And then printed the g-code command necessary to adjust the current coordinate system's rotation, i.e. "G10 L2 P0 R $angle". Later, I realized I could also use the log to find the center point between two probes, so I added that. If the two most recent probes were both done in the same direction, then they were likely probing an edge, and it prints the angle of the edge. If they were done in opposite directions, they were likely probing two edges (inside or out) of something whose center I'm interested in.

And then today, after finding this thread, I enhanced it a little more: It can now also look at the last three probes in the log file and give me the center point of the circle they describe.

All without any data entry, or modifications to my existing probing code. It runs from a button on my desktop (i.e. outside of and beside Axis), and puts up a window with its results. I simply copy the g-code commands it gives to the MDI window.

I'm happy to share what I have, but with caveats: a) it's written in shell, because that's what I like to do, and b), it calls out to a calculator program for the floating point. Almost any other language would have avoided 'b'.

Anyway, thanks for the inspiration, and for the center-finding equations.

Hey snowgoer, I tried to implement these into my sheetcam post and while i can see them in the g-code that is output, it still seems to try and home the z-axis.

Is there no way to just entirely remove the z-axis function from qtplasmac?

Thanks again!

FOSS projects will always get hate. Admittedly there were some really frustrating things. It is getting better & better.

I've been using FreeCAD for the last year as I learn CAD and now CAM. Its been a pretty good experience for me, I dont understand all the hate from the larger internet. I just chock it up to not learning any other CAD package first (unless you count Kicad).
Its been pretty cool watching it move to V1 and now beyond. It looks like CAM gets some good updates in V1.1. I might need to try the dev version one of these days.

Adding the repo was no issue, haven't actually tried the build process yet.
Tho what I have been working on is trimming the image down. So far the compressed download has gone from about 2.2ishGB to 1.7ish. No Wayland, quite a bit of stuff removed, such as thonny, python libs that were related to the RPi development package. Modemmanger was removed, vnc taken out as cups was a dependency, which also takes 2 unneeded services out of the equation. Basically as much as I could find that wasn't really required to run a CNC machine. The image does have 2 desktop environments XFCE which is the default and RPi LXDE , you can swap via logging out and selecting the session from the login screen.
One thing that is annoying is that Linuxcnc appears under 3 different menu headings, whilst it is annoying is doesn't affect operation, this can be fixed by editing the desktop files deep in the system, this could get overwritten via upgrades. I'm considering using a 'hook' that is run when Linuxcnc is upgraded that fixes these annoying menu entries. Another "side project" to jump into.
This feels more like a blog now where I record ideas and changes hahaha