Arc timeout issue

I am trying to use a Thermal Dynamics Cut master 42 with my table. One of the wonderful "features" with this torch is for the very first pierce it takes roughly 3-4 seconds for it to fire, then for every pierce thereafter it fires immediately.

So if I set a pierce delay it works great for the initial pierce and then blows holes and ruins consumables as it sits for 4 seconds in one place. I'm using a thcad as my thc and from what I read this means Im using the simulated Arc Ok function and this is timing out too soon. There are settings in the config tab for "Fail Timeout" but it looks like it ignores these settings in this mode.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

Foldaround wrote: I am trying to use a Thermal Dynamics Cut master 42 with my table. One of the wonderful "features" with this torch is for the very first pierce it takes roughly 3-4 seconds for it to fire, then for every pierce thereafter it fires immediately.

So if I set a pierce delay it works great for the initial pierce and then blows holes and ruins consumables as it sits for 4 seconds in one place. I'm using a thcad as my thc and from what I read this means Im using the simulated Arc Ok function and this is timing out too soon. There are settings in the config tab for "Fail Timeout" but it looks like it ignores these settings in this mode.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

If it's just the first pierce (assuming this happens every time you power the machine on), why not just do an erroneous cut before you start a program to get it "warmed up", and then move on with running the file?

Check your settings, that is normal behaviour for most plasma cutters.
As a general rule: If unsure, do not change it.
Start by setting everything back to default values, then change just the voltage and the feed rate.

So this works. Kinda. But its a terrible workflow. This reminds me this plasma cutter does not output an arc ok signal. Also the machine will default back to this 4 second delay if it's not used for some set time (rough guess would be 30 seconds) for a normal cut sequence this isn't an issue just trying to get all the variables out in the open.

Hey Tommy ok I can confidently say the default settings don't work. It's just slightly too short of a timeout. The machine will blip on and then timeout were talking milliseconds. If the default timeout was even half a second longer everything would be fine. I think this machine just takes forever to fire. We've gotten lucky a few times and it will work but it's not consistent something like 9/10 times it doesn't work.

I have a Hypertherm that literally takes 7 seconds to fire the first time and at least 3 every consequent one.
That is not the issue.
The timeout can be set and it works on PlasmaC config panel, set the "fail timeout" to 10, save, test.

That's reassuring. Does your machine produce its own arc ok signal? From what I've read that is the only mode for the "fail timeout" settings to work. I hope to be wrong here.

Arc Fail Timeout works for all three modes.

See the Arc section here:
linuxcnc.org/docs/2.8/html/plasma/plasma...de.html#config-panel

Thanks Phillc,

So its an update issue? Those settings don't seem to be doing anything. I stumbled across a thread (maybe a month old) where this was touched on that gave me a false sense it was normal for the plasmac mode I'm in.

Foldaround wrote: So its an update issue? Those settings don't seem to be doing anything. I stumbled across a thread (maybe a month old) where this was touched on that gave me a false sense it was normal for the plasmac mode I'm in.

Not as far as I know, it should work fine, it is used in conjuntion with Retry Delay and Max. Starts

We did add a Lost Arc Dely pin recently which is for lost arcs during a cut:
linuxcnc.org/docs/2.8/html/plasma/plasma...html#_lost_arc_delay