Another plasma component...

phillc54 wrote:

Rod,
I wrote it in asciidoc format so it should be able to go straight into the docs. I think I need to check with the devs to find out where exactly it should go and also to make sure the configs are sitting in the relevant place. I'm not sure when to try to get it into master as there is still some bits and pieces I would like to add.

Cheers, Phill.

You should push for push access

There have been worse documents and much buggier software pushed to master branch in the past. Don't sell yourself short.
Start now and see where you get.

I'm curious, per a reply from @andypugh on this thread do you have plans to simplify the installation instructions to just compiling the plasmac component instead of needing to compile the whole branch? Or no need since the ultimate goal is to get it merged to the official linuxcnc code base?

AgentWD40 wrote:

I'm curious, per a reply from @andypugh on this thread do you have plans to simplify the installation instructions to just compiling the plasmac component instead of needing to compile the whole branch? Or no need since the ultimate goal is to get it merged to the official linuxcnc code base?

The reason why Phill had to do it this way is becasue he incorporated some useful features from other branches into the base code of the plasmac branch. Some of those features made it to V 2.8 so phill could drop them from his branch. Once V 2.8 was quarantined off pending release to replace V2.8, the devs pushed the final part (Reverse Run) from Phill's branch to the 2.9 branch.

So essentially the only thing in plasmac now is the plasmac.comp component and a couple of clever sims which link the GUI's for axis and Gmoccapy he's created to the component. Because a buggy component won't break anything for other mainstream users and sims also won't affect mainstream users, there is no reason for it to require its own branch anymore.

If you knew what you were doing, you could simply install V2.9, copy over the plasmac sim folder from his repository to the right location and compile and install plasmac.comp. But hey, compiling from source is fun!

But now Phill has got it this far, and has good documentation, its time the rest of Plasmac is pushed to the 2.9 branch and maintained from there.

I read the doc's too short. Sunday i will have a closer look.
But it looks very nice. If i had no experience with linuxcnc and plasma. I think i would start with this document.

I have seen several item's where i want to add more information.

Respect for the work !!

Grotius wrote:

I read the doc's too short. Sunday i will have a closer look.
But it looks very nice. If i had no experience with linuxcnc and plasma. I think i would start with this document.

I have seen several item's where i want to add more information.

Respect for the work !!

I will share you another document about plasma in general that would be a good place for additional info..


AND....

Fantastic to see on the Developers mailing list Phill has started the ball rolling to get this into V 2.9 and Great to see Chris Morley suggesting he get push access so he can maintain it there! Very exciting!

Ok guys I need your help,

I am trying to get the arc voltage set in PlasmaC,

I am struggling to work out what I am doing wrong, Probably since I havent studied math in a few years now.

As per Phills new user guide I have added these lines of code to my hal file,

setp hm2_7i76e.0.encoder.00.scale -1
setp hm2_7i76e.0.encoder.00.counter-mode 1

Then I do this calculation,

1/((10V_frequency-0V_frequency)/32/10)

1/((963800-119100)/32/10)

= 0.000378832

I then take the result of the calculation and put it into the voltage scale in PlasmaC.

With the voltage offset I assume I use the value of arc-voltage-out and set it to that which is 3680.

When I do all of this I get a base arc voltage value in the 400's and when I fire the torch I get a number in to 700's.

Now when I used what Rod advised me to do on page 64,

arc-voltage-offset = -3805 <-- change to your 1/32 of the 0 volt frequency
arc-voltage-scale = -0.000406 <--- 10/500 = 0.02

I get a base reading of 0 volts and the max voltage goes up to 220 volts, Which I am guessing is not correct but much closer.

Now what I am thinking is throwing Phills calculation off is my voltage divider which is 50;1 but I have played around with multiplying the calculation by 500 and by 50 and the results are still not near Rods calculation.

Can anyone see where I am going wrong?

phillc54 wrote:

When you set the offset you should have 0 volts, try -3680

I tried the negative offset and now I get a base line number of 3 and when the torch fires a number of 7.

My scale is set to 0.000379 and the offset is -3680.

There must be something I am missing.