Another plasma component...

Guys

I have missed the last several upgrades so I am now waiting for the dust to settle.

I use a THC gain of 25 and a deadband of .1,others 0. If you are having problems with your THC start with the default deadband of 1. Double and triple check that your .ini and .hal lines for your Z axis are correct. I tried to get my THC to oscillate when I first tried PlasmaC and gave up when the worst I could do was a very "nervous" torch at truly ridiculous settings.

I always use a fixed THC set point (through much testing I know what it is on my system) to avoid cutting height errors caused by bad probing, very rare for me using PlasmaC. If you are worried about arc voltage changing with consumable wear track it with the statistics tab and adjust as needed with high mileage electrodes.

All puddle jump and kerf crossing (Void) values at 0.

The Height per volt range as stated is correct for HT and TD standard consumables. For those using HT Finecut consumables the value will be in the .00085" to .001" range, my usual for 2mm HR steel is .00095".

Velocity Hold values for most will be in the 85% to 90% range for good cuts. I am using 90% now and have only 1v or 2v voltage spikes at worst. I see this more often than most because I am rarely cutting rectilinear engineering work.

My 7I76E and THCad cards have been rock solid since first commissioning when you rule out operator errors.

John

I use auto volts and it’s been flawless. My material changes from carbon to stainless steel in thickness from .070 to .250. I found that the auto volts was easy as I just set the gap at say .060 with a .2 sec delay. My response speed is under 20 I think. I found that lowering that would help diving when finishing a cut. Let me see if I can upload a video of cutting.

Wow, guys, some awesome feedback about settings there. It would be great if some of the user feedback re settings/tuning could find their way into the Plasmac manual.

JTK, I know how you feel about upgrading. I put it off for a long time but found it was pretty simple in the end. I think there was a bug in the engraver support that needed commenting out one line earlier in the week but I think Phill has fixed it now.

And yes, I've used auto volts since long before Plasmac was even thought of and it works well.

Guys,

Thanks for the reports. If we can get a collection of these parameter values we could get reasonably sane numbers to use as defaults in new configs and maybe even make a table of numbers to add to the manual as Rod suggested.

JTknives wrote: I use auto volts and it’s been flawless. My material changes from carbon to stainless steel in thickness from .070 to .250. I found that the auto volts was easy as I just set the gap at say .060 with a .2 sec delay. My response speed is under 20 I think. I found that lowering that would help diving when finishing a cut. Let me see if I can upload a video of cutting.

How long has it been since you have updated.

I have been using a loan plasma while mine gets service, while its the same model I cant cut at the same settings as I could before. I dont know if it has something to do with my constantly updating the software and something has changed?

Example of this is I have a program of purlin cleats out of 8mm plate. The cutting speed is 3220mm/m but when I have been cutting at the standard speed in sections of the program the torch wont cut through the plate. I have to lower the cutting speeds for it to work. I have been thinking that this could have to do with the voltage sampling, and thats causing the cut height to be high. Seems others have been having the same issue as well.

The only change I made to cutting functions was pushed on 29 July.

How it worked before:
When at Pierce Height it received an Arc OK it moved down to Cut Height and began motion at the same time. This gave a ramp down effect.

How it works now:
When at Pierce Height it received an Arc OK it moved down to Cut Height. After reaching Cut Height motion begins.

I wouldn't have thought that would cause any issues.

Apart from that, nothing should have changed.