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santy wrote:

Thank you. Could you point to this cable please?

Its simply a modified ethernet cable as described in the Mesa instructions. Tajjke care that you understand the difference in cable wiring standards

Thank you. Could you point to this cable please?

Yes, you can use any sserial interface card directly with a 7I96S
(The 7I96S has one sserial expansion port)

No additional hardware is needed (other than the
connecting cable)

Hello.
I need an analog input card for my current project.
Can i use the 7i87 with a 7i96s? What interface would i require to use both cards simultaneously?
I use regular mini PCs with 1 ethernet port

Thank you.

The formulas are in the thcad manual
Bypass the resistors for the 9 v battery test

tommylight wrote:

Yes, 2 of 1MOhm resistors will do, mount them inside the plasma, then it should be OK to mount THCAD inside the cabinet.

 
What kind of voltage will I see coming out after I use these 1Mohm resistors with a 9v battery connected to it?

The THCADS and the power supply I mentioned are both rated to overvoltage of 500 volts way above your open circuit voltage so you won't kill anything!
The normal cutting range is 130v to 170v or so but check your cut charts.
Voltage will likely go over 300 volts briefly when piercing but that does not matter at all because the THC is not enabled at that time. If you plot the voltage with halscope, it will just show up as a flat line when the thcad hits 10 volts (or a little over)
I'm just going to invent a rule of thumb here and say up to 65 amps, use the 10 volt setting and set full scale at 200 volts (20:1) and above that set it to 300v (30:1)
The goal here is to get better resolution from the analog to digital conversion to use as much of that that full scale when cutting.
I never had any issues with my thermal dynamics 120 amp machine with 30:1 and most of my cutting was at 40 amps (It did not have a lower divider  or I would have tried it.)

Thanks RodW,
I curious about the voltage for arc voltage. If running it through a voltage divider, what is the voltage I am looking to get? I am trying to understand it and the voltage that I think am shooting for is dependent if I have my thcad2 set to 5v or 10v. So if set to 10v I need to set my voltage divider to send out arc 10 volts to the thc? If wrong please correct me and educate me on what's going on here.

Second, to determine the resistors.

Do I base it off the open circuit voltage of 305v? Would I then use a 30:1 divider? or is it based of the rated output voltage of 143 and using a 15:1 voltage divider.(ratios based off of assumption above)

Yes, 2 of 1MOhm resistors will do, mount them inside the plasma, then it should be OK to mount THCAD inside the cabinet.

Hello,
So I have decided to not go with the voltage divider from  Hypertherm and just make my own. I believe I have found where all the wires are located that I will need. Check out pictures below.
 
J32 plug appears to be where I will be getting my arc voltage from
J18 is Arc transfer(arc ok) and Plasma start
 
In this photo is shows which wires are what on the plugs
Starting from the top J18  Red and Black = Start plasma, Green and White = Arc transfer (ArcOk)
J32 Black and Red = Raw Arc Voltage
 So to wire this up, J18 red and black wire them to my Mesa board output + - and the green and white I hook the white to my input and the green wire to power supply. J32 Red wire a resistor(Size unknown) second resistor(size unknown) after the first to the black wire black wire to negative side of THCAD2 and red wire after R1 to positive side of TCHAD

So I have a question for you  tommylight . I have seen you say that all one needs its two resistors 1Mohm rated at 2 watts and connect one to each wire and not a voltage divider. So my question is if I was to do it this way could I still mount my THCAD2 in the control cabinet or would I have to mount it on the plamsa machine? My mind tells me this would still be high voltage but very low current but I haven't done any calculations on this to see how low the current would be since I don't know how much currents these machines pull.

 

I'm sure Sean won't mind, if I share his 7i96s plasma wiring diagram here.   I'm not saying its perfect but I think it covers everything. I would not ground the high voltage side of the THCAD as shown as it adds some AC ripple into the torch voltage.


Spumeco, Now you just need to add one for a mill and lathe 

I would say water. I had to ad da refrigerated air drier and it fixed everything.

Raise the "pierce height" up to where it starts misfiring, then lower a mm or two.

I have my machine running and everything with it seems to be running well. The one problem I have is the tips on the torch keep getting ruined and then the plasma arc seems to come out at different angles. I had thought maybe it was water in the air lines but I'm pretty confident that I have dried the air and it still happens. A 10 minute cut with a couple dozen pierces and I need to replace the cup. When the tip is new it cuts very straight and cleanly.

I have a 1.2 tip in the everlast 82i with it set to 45 amps and 80 IPM for 10 gauge steel. I have tried increasing the voltage more to the max rating for the tip but that didn't seem to change anything. I run the torch around .06 off the material with it on auto volts and it seems to keep that height pretty well with the THC. Wondering what I should focus on to get it tuned in. Is there anything out there in the way of a tuning guide for the THCAD? Thanks for any help.

Well Pollination season has officially started. That means very little time for my plasma table. My goal was to finish it before that happened but this has been a huge learning curve for me and way more time consuming then I thought it would be. So I have a few days to work on this before its time to head back to California.

I have my control cabinet now mounted and electronics inside. All my drive motors are installed and wired up and all my limit/home switched wired up. I was getting some errors when I tried to home I am using the Limit/Home on one end of each axis. I don't know if why yet, but I think it may be the wrong setting location for where I have the wires in the terminals. A quick easy check but my sister called me telling me she ran out of fuel, so I had to go help her and it was already late. So I haven't had a chance to verify if this was the problem or I have some bad setting some where.

The real reason I am posting though is to learn how to wire up my THCAD-2's and get my 7i96 to have two places to wire them up. So I found that id it change my firmware when setting up in pncconf from 7i96d to 7i96dpl and I was then given the option under the TB1/TB2 tab for the second encoder. However when I try to launch Plasmac it errors and wont start. Do I need to download the some firmware for this? If so is there instructions on how to do this? I assume you have to download and then put it into some file somewhere... yes I am very ignorant so bare with me.

What size of power supply can I use for the omic sensing on the THCAD2. So it appears power will be supplied to the board by the 7i96 but for the torch I have a 24 power supply. Will that work and will I need any resistors for the omic sensing and if so how do I determine the size and what watt rating?
I ordered a voltage divider for my Powermax 85 with the CPC however I ordered the wrong one and now have to ship back and reorder. 
For the voltage sensing, do I need any resistors since I will be buying the plug for the Powermax 85 or should I build my own voltage divider instead? The voltage divider with the cpc cost 185$   and you still have to buy the the other half of the plug and wire. I like the idea of buying the voltage divider because it is already set up for the powermax and you can chose the voltages you want but the cost is outrageous. 

Any words of wisdom my way would be great.

ET