PlasmaC using two P. Ports

Ok I have set up a machine on the bench with an old 3d printer and as gantry machine it all running fine with gantry homing and home switches on PP 0 - on PP1 is the plasma stuff breakaway, float, etc.

I did the base files first then ran the configurator the only error I got was ;-


If I comment the line out PlamaC opens fine.

I don't have a THC connected (Can you use a THC with PPorts)

You can use a standard (Proma type) THC with parallel ports
you can also use a THCAD though the voltage resolution will
depend on the base thread rate (the lower latency the better)

Clive, there is a bit in the docs about that, I hope I got it right linuxcnc.org/docs/2.8/html/plasma/plasma...uide.html#mesa-thcad

I have a THCAD working with parallel port at 1/32, base thread set at 20000, it works perfectly.
If you can not get that low of latency, it can still be used by setting the divider to 1/64.
And there is no need for 2 parallel ports, if you do not need separate homing and limits.
THC 1 input,
Float 1 input
3 inputs remain for homing/limits, so plenty of options.
And please do use small relays on all inputs, saves a lot of headache with interferences.

Hi Clive,

We had the same problem and the gents here helped us out. What you need to do is create an encoder input to feed into the parport. I have attached our plasma-connections hal file, it shows the encoder input.

Cheers, Peter

CFE wrote: Hi Clive,

We had the same problem and the gents here helped us out. What you need to do is create an encoder input to feed into the parport. I have attached our plasma-connections hal file, it shows the encoder input.

Cheers, Peter

Thanks, But on this occasion I have decided to go with a Mesa 7i96 + THC-10