Air Scribe with PlasmaC

I like Roberts idea of M7/M8/M9 and a postprocessor to do it all, if would be totally independent of and from PlasmaC.

Although using any of the unused digital pins would be ok as well.

Phill is right.... Row is right about his view related to postprocessing but he was struggling with the m3 thoughts i mentioned.....

Sheetcam can do the offset's for the scriber. The most easy way for sheetcam is to marry two existing post processor's.
Marry an existing 2 head's post with a plasmac post.

A more elegant way for plasmac is to integrate the usage of G code offset's. G90 for a scriber. It's so simple to implement Phill...

phillc54 wrote: I like Roberts idea of M7/M8/M9 and a postprocessor to do it all, if would be totally independent of and from PlasmaC.

Although using any of the unused digital pins would be ok as well.

But you also need an M3 to start motion before you can engrave. Won't Plasmac see that and fire the torch? If you used the multispindle, plasmac won't even know.

.. deleted duplicate post ... sorry

phillc54 wrote: Do both air circuits operate from the one signal or is a separate signal required for each air circuit.

The way I have my system setup I need two signals, One to turn on the scribe and one to turn on the downward motion of the scribe holder.

Although I have read that some guys get away with one signal for both. I like my setup as I can test each part of the system separately.

phillc54 wrote: I downloaded SheetCam today and had a bit of play. I think I'll try to find some tutorials as I don't find it very intuitive although I did manage to get a reasonable postprocessor kinda working.

I would look into the arc light dynamics videos on youtube that Rod posted. They really helped me when I first started.

This is the example I used for my system that was posted on CNC Zone, It was posted by Shefron.

rodw wrote:

phillc54 wrote: I like Roberts idea of M7/M8/M9 and a postprocessor to do it all, if would be totally independent of and from PlasmaC.

Although using any of the unused digital pins would be ok as well.

But you also need an M3 to start motion before you can engrave. Won't Plasmac see that and fire the torch? If you used the multispindle, plasmac won't even know as its tied to spindle.0

This is where I dont really understand, If we are using multiple spindles does that mean that the G-code commands for the plasma torch wont apply if we have spindle 1 selected? Do we have to define spindle 0 as the plasma torch or is it already set up?

You would need M3 $0 S1 for the PlasmaC side of things and M3 $1 S1 for the air scribe.

You could then use the spindle.1.on pin to activate the scribe.

Edit: You could still use M5 for the end of both as that will stop all spindles.

Edit2: Change to spindle.1.on

thefabricator03 wrote: This is where I dont really understand, If we are using multiple spindles does that mean that the G-code commands for the plasma torch wont apply if we have spindle 1 selected? Do we have to define spindle 0 as the plasma torch or is it already set up?

Well my take on this is that each spindle has its own spindle.n.on signal and we use spindle 0 to trigger the torch (using spindle.0.on)
We are currently treating our machines as single spindle machines. But I think if you did gcode like this (and I'm no expert with gcode)

When you see how clean that code is, it does not really make sense to muddy it by adding a second signal to lower the torch. Sure that might happen but it should be done behind the scenes they way Plasmac does it. Plus you could have a whole row of tools up there. I did see Grotius post a pic with a drill bolted onto his gantry once.