Another plasma component...

Guys

My guess is that because of all the metal you must get up to burning temp on thick material a not insignificant pierce delay is still going to be required when starting from a pre pierced hole. This is just a WAG because I just cut material 1/10th as thick.

John

islander261 wrote: Guys

My guess is that because of all the metal you must get up to burning temp on thick material a not insignificant pierce delay is still going to be required when starting from a pre pierced hole. This is just a WAG because I just cut material 1/10th as thick.

John

That does make sense, I hadn't thought of the temp requirement.

islander261 wrote: Guys

My guess is that because of all the metal you must get up to burning temp on thick material a not insignificant pierce delay is still going to be required when starting from a pre pierced hole. This is just a WAG because I just cut material 1/10th as thick.

John

Just thinking it through and I do agree with that statement, Cutting 25mm plate can be a mission, Last time I cut some I melted my earth clamp! it was getting old and corroded. I will do some testing this week and see what happens.

A couple of things. As John says a delay will still be required. Be guided on what they say for edge starts. I think the same pierce delay applies for them.

Phil, re piercing and cutting in Sheetcam, it is possible to add multiple operations in the one file. So you could set up one operation with a pierce only tool, then set up another operation with a normal cut tool. Normally you move stuff onto different layers or something but I just tried a simulation in sheetcam and its possible to cut back over the same layer.

So if you look at the POST of mine, there is a centerpunch tool which generates different code to spot holes on a holes layer, so maybe you could have a custom tool called "pierce only 16mm".

I would really prefer not to have two different g-code files, Having the ability to turn the function on and off within the controller would be the cleanest solution in my opinion.

Also with sheetcam, Keeping everything as easy as possible is something we should strive to achieve, At the moment it is difficult enough to create a g-code file for someone not computer savy, I would say near impossible for some of my guys. Setting things like code snippets and rules only for certain things is not very user friendly. In the future I want to be able to set these things very easily, Not sure how I am going to do it but I will find a way.

Also with increasing life of consumables,

With my experiece with Powermax consumables on thick plate, 16,20,25 - You will only get around one and a half 3000x1500 sheets out of one nozzle and about three sheets to a electrode.

I dont think that limiting the delay would be a significant factor in prolonging the life of the consumable.

I will do some testing this week and report back with my findings.