Another plasma component...

I was thinking about and2 or some of this.
But while debounce with the parameter 100 copes with it.
Before, I used the Toma config and there was no interference problems.
In the future I want to try THCAD with my plasma
Thanks.

Phill

Sorry I am getting mixed up with all the talk of features in PP threads.

I think what the guys are asking for is a THC hold pin that when true has the same effect as the corner hold or kerf crossing. I hope others will chime in on this because my crystal ball is a bit cloudy right now. I know setting the feed rate to 99.5% will cause a corner hold with little or no change in cut quality.

We already know how to do an actual THC enable from Gcode which is for the whole cut. A hold pin will allow end of cut holds, even though I think with short enough lead outs you should already be in a corner hold state by the time you cross the kerf.

The adaptive feed for holes etc. is easy enough with some postgui.hal magic plus code insertion from the CAM. SheetCam guys can use a code snippet and everyone else will need a custom PP function. I don't know what the effect of the adaptive feed is on the corner hold function. I am assuming that the Gcode feed rate stays the same but the motion.current_vel follows the adapted feed rate.

Thanks for the millionth time for all your hard work.

John

I think I may have brought this THC stuff down upon myself. My assumption from seeing there was a THC-Enable in the tool tables that John and Rod posted was that would enable/disable THC. That was why I added it to the plasmac material list and used that for THC control. But it seems that I was wrong.

So where to from here, it seems the current format works but is not attractive to many folk.

One option would be:
In the component:

• Create an extra pin named plasmac.thc-mode in the component for THC mode, being one of on, off or auto. Off and on would be as they say and auto would allow control of THC from the current plasmac.thc-enable pin, 0 for off and 1 for on.

In the config:

• Tie plasmac.thc-enable to motion.digital-out-02, so M62-M65 would control THC when in auto mode.
• Have the GUI output the correct value to plasmac.thc-mode depending on the state of the radiobuttons.
• Remove the THC Enable checkbox and label from the run tab.
• Remove the THC Enable option from the materials file.
• Be able to save the THC mode to the config file so the user could set their own default mode.
• In the monitor panel the THC LED label would indicate one of: OFF ON AUTO.
• The THC LED would be lit only when THC is enabled.

If we are going to make changes now then we need to get it right as I would like to get to a 'release' version soon so I don't really want to keep going over old ground.

Anyhow, if we can all get on the same page (or at least in the same book) that would be great.

Cheers, Phill.

I think you are doing an admirable job Phill, putting the code together
Its even more admirable that you have dealt with all of our rabble and different viewpoints.
What is even better, I think is the recent discussion has just been around usability of the software, not bug reports and fixes.

Its also exciting to see how many are using you baby and with different backgrounds and hardware. We even have Proma users on board now!

Remove the THC Enable checkbox and label from the run tab.

Personally, I think this needs to stay. There will be times when times when you will want to disable this just like you can disable the torch. One example might be if you are doing a series of test cuts and you want to know the actual height you set.
Having the external enable pin is a better way as I coded it. The earlier component by Dewey Garrett actually had 3 of them tied together.

Also if you go back to your Hypertherm bible document, it has the same ability to disable the THC from Gcode.

I think what became clear over the last couple of days is that users wanted two features:
1. the ability to turn the THC on and off from Gcode
2. the ability to control the cut speed during a cut.
And:
3. I wanted to make sure these were both implemented in a plasmac friendly way so it remains the master.

Being able to control cutting speed with adaptive feed can be implemented in HAL as I suggested (if it ends up working OK). This will be powerful if we end up getting the state tags branch into V2.9, this would become very powerful as a plasma controller would know the commanded cut speed from F code and any other changes in cutting speed could be implemented using adaptive feed commands from within gcode that do not alter the F rate recorded in state tags. The need to retrieve the plasmac feed rate will be removed. Then, the need to turn the THC on and off from within gcode would be vastly diminished as the corner lock will do it for us.

agree to rod
i got parts with real tiny short cuts and i like to disable the thc there in gcode

on cut speed i may be not deepth to the system plasmac but i can override it by linuxcnc keypad

Thanks Rod,

Remove the THC Enable checkbox and label from the run tab.

Personally, I think this needs to stay. There will be times when times when you will want to disable this just like you can disable the torch.

But you can do this from the radiobuttons.

Then, the need to turn the THC on and off from within gcode would be vastly diminished as the corner lock will do it for us.

That is the case now, if your actual cut feed rate is less then 99.9% of the materials cut feed rate then THC will not be enabled.

Being able to control cutting speed with adaptive feed can be implemented in HAL as I suggested (if it ends up working OK).

What is the intended purpose of using adaptive feed to change the feed rate?


Cheers, Phill.