Another plasma component...

phillc54 wrote: The online version of PlasmaC has a problem where the Z axis retracts before the torch off delay has completed.

A version I completed this afternoon uses M62 P3 to turn the torch off and M63 to enable turning it back on. This version has not been pushed yet.

I'd probably suggest or recommend not doing it that way around as it will lead to some confusion (but each to their own)

I'd suggest using an option ....
M3 must always be issued to start the torch, and perform the touchoff etc, but then if you want to turn off the torch early you need to issue an M62Px anywhere after m3 and where you want to turn off the torch an m63Px..... motion will then continue until m5 where the xy axis decelerates to a stop and the z-axis is retracted.

this is because M62 is output on and m63 is output off.... yes I know the signals can be inverted, but if you forget to add an m62 later your torch probably won't fire..... unless you automatically reset m62 at the time of m5

autocorrect is changing m3 to me!!!

yes there are two things being discussed here and they are not the same

one is m5 which is not working correctly (motion must stop before enacting m5)

and the other is the ability to via sheetcam issue an m63 (or m62 if that is the way you want to go) before the overcut to stop the torch firing before it decelerates to a stop which will prevent the overburn divot at the end of the cut where m5 is implemented

Phill,

You probably already have this covered, but before you release the M62/63 version, just a reminder: When I mentioned the use of M62/63 codes for turning off the torch at the end of cutting a circle last week, Rod mentioned the concern below:

rodw wrote: You have to include M5 to turn torch off becasue if its left to M62/3/4/5 if you hit estop, the torch will continue to spew fire which is not pretty if the breakaway activates and the inverter is on the opposite side of the table to you. Ask me how I know?
It would be possible to AND2 the motion pin with a digital pin to enable the torch on relay but that breaks the sheer simplicity of plasmac. there is a motion.distance-to-go pin but I suspect it is for a specific segment, not the whole movement from M3 to M5

Steven

Rob. Thanks but I have done a fix that works fine in a sim, just waiting for one of the guys to test it on a machine before pushing.

Steven, yes, that is under control.

Sorry about the edits but I am not good at using a phone for this.

I think the decision for plasmac becomes whether it remains nice and simple and works off M3/M5 or whether it should add an additional command to enable/disable the torch from Gcode. One way or the other M3/M5 must be part of the torch enable otherwise the torch can remain firing after you hit estop!

When I reviewed some of the material Phill said he modelled some features off, other commercial systems do use gcodes to enable the torch so the gcode can disable the torch independent of M5. I did wonder at the time why Plasmac did not include the gcode torchenable.

Phill's got two commercial testers. John only cuts thin material around 2mm. Stefan cuts anything up to 20mm. I kinda think Stefan is finding some issues that were not discovered earlier by John. I know that the few parts I cut from 16mm did open whole new can of worrms.

I'm not sure I've cut enough to make a recommendation one way or another except to say Stefan has probably discovered why commercial systems can enable/disable the torch from g code. It not that difficult to add this feature using hal components without changing the core plasmac code. Its just that Phill has been spoiling us