Another plasma component...

islander261 wrote: Guys

While this isn't Plasmac specific it seems we do drift into general plasma procedures often here. If you want details on cutting accurate small holes look up the sales sheets on Hypertherm's "True Hole Technology" also look on plasmaspider, user seanp has posted extensively on his work using simple air plasma.

The generally accepted method to get good holes from 37mm dia. and down to material thickness with minimal taper using an air plasma is:
1, Use recommended cutting current for consumables.
2. Use fixed (no THC) recommended cutting height for consumables.
3. Cut at 60% to 70% of recommended feed rate for consumables and material.
4. Start lead in at or near center of hole.
5. Use perpendicular lead in.
6. No lead out, either a slight over burn or early torch off depending on what works best for you.

You will need to experiment to get exact hole size because the kerf with this method will be wider than your usual straight cut.

John

I might mention that the first three lines of the screen dump I posted on the previous page came from the SeanP's work on Plasmaspider. So try them. (Sheetcam has the ability to set a series of rules that can be added to the cutting operation.

Posted in haste...

Phill

Thank you.

Why buy a brand name system for other than paid support help? Plasmac does it all!

John

islander261 wrote: Phill

Thank you.

Why buy a brand name system for other than paid support help? Plasmac does it all!

John

Mind you why do you need paid support when you have forum members like you, Phill, Tommy, Grotius et al?

Because I don't use my table every day, its the simple stuff that catches me out and would annoy the support agents no end. Like forgetting to connect the earth lead and wonder why the ArcOK does not come on.... I'm that used to doubting my skills as a builder.

Sorry about the earlier post, I pushed this update but I had it wrong so we are good to go now and I have pushed the fixes.

This update adds a feed-reduction pin to the component which I have tied to motion.analog-out-03 in the configs.
The value you set the pin to sets the velocity to the percentage of the displayed value in the cut parameters (almost).
M67 E3 Q0 sets the velocity to 100%
M67 E3 Q10 sets the velocity to 10%
M67 E3 Q50 sets the velocity to 50%
M67 E3 Q100 sets the velocity to 100%

The minimum percentage allowed is 10%, values below this will set the percentage to 100%
The maximum percentage allowed is 100%, values above this will set the percentage to 100%
The reason for Q0 equating to 100% is so that if the user decides not to implement this feature then no changes are necessary.
If you intend to use this feature it would be prudent to add **M67 E3 Q0** to your gcode preamble and postamble so you start and end at a known state.

Cheers, Phill.

I would like to gradually build the readme into a reasonable sort of document as for the foreseeable future it will be the single source for documentation.

It is located here

If you see something that is wrong or missing let me know and I will edit it.

Contributions would be most welcome...

Cheers, Phill.

Phill, thanks again for all of your hard work and now finishing off this system so it is now truly the best kick ass system on the market. Pretty sure that this will see a few overpriced THC solutions disappear from the market place once word gets out and you get it into V 2.9! I'll try and give it a burl tomorrow.

Based on a promise on this thread I'm getting close to finishing a google drive document which I will share with you and John for feedback and revision when I get it written. Its a background document about plasma, and is not designed to be a manual for Plasmac. Its sitting on 9 pages of info at the moment. I'm kinda hoping it can be deployed to V 2.9 docs from your repo....

Rod,

It is great that you are doing those docs, I was intending to put some basic plasma stuff in the readme but it would be better to just provide a link to your docs and save me a lot of hassle. I find it really difficult to write docs. Anyhow we can sort that out when your docs are finished.
If you are doing that amount of work then you should do it all via GIT so you can submit a PR to get it included then you can get the credit for the commit, which is deserved. I can help a bit with that if you want.

Cheers, Phill.

Phill, thanks, I'll see how I go after I get your feedback. I finally got it done. Its taken a while. It will be cool to get this into the docs. I do have a git account but have never understood how to use it. There are a few other components I had in mind as well but I think you have obsoleted most of them!

will it be rebased to 2.9 as now in practical use
beside me not getting it setup on Tuesday as it failed to compile
i need to start over on a frech clean HDD