Another plasma component...

John , glad you are up and running. Yes, my Ohmic sensing is somewhat based on your ideas shared earlier except I'm using a 24 volt isolated slimline DIN rail power supply instead of your 12 volt wall wart. The biggest problem is as a carry over from the machine upgrade is there is not enough room in my drag chain any more so I have to upgrade the tray it sits on to upgrade it. I've been able to fold up a new one but its not installed yet.

All of the files that won't open in Glade have a similar problem with special characters in the file names.

That is a problem that I have run into with Glade quite often.
Just delete that entire line with a text editor.

Cheers, Phill.

Phill

Thanks, I am quite accomplished at causing Glade to crash but this is new one on me. That is why my first move is to always open a Glade file in a text editor and check for funny stuff.

John

I am in the habit of saving every couple of minutes when using Glade as crashing is one thing it does very well...

Cheers, Phill.

EDIT1: Also I should have checked for those errors before pushing to Git, sorry about that I'll get right on it...

EDIT2: Done!

John, Rod,

After reading your ohmic setups I am thinking:

• ohmic-probe (input) - this would be a separate input for the probe.
• ohmic-enable (output) - this would be on only while probing, off at all other times.

At start of probing, ohmic-enable would switch on, the first to sense ohmic-probe / float-switch would set the stock height then ohmic-enable would switch off.

Should I also have user selectable inputs to:

• enable/disable the float-switch as a secondary probe.
• enable/disable ohmic-enable for testing as per Johns setup.

Both of these could be done externally rather than have separate inputs to the component.

Cheers, Phill.

Phill

The ability for the operator to easily check for a shorted torch is very important, it should be easy like a button and indicator on the GUI. When using ohmic sensing the float switch is always used as a Z minimum limit if it isn't ORed with ohmic signal.

I really tried hard to get just the float switch to work for probing. I tried many combinations of counter balance springs and never could get it right. If I had enough force negation with the springs then the float assembly would oscillate and over shoot when under THC. When I had it stiff enough so there was no oscillation or over shoot then the thin sheet is deflected a random amount. Actually at Z accelerations that are fast enough to cut corrugated sheet the response of the torch and float assembly get to be a problem.

Please find attached the Gcode probing subroutine I currently use. It is not perfect. The biggest problem is if the probing problem isn't fixed with a retry the subroutine exits with an error code when it should just jump back to the top with the program paused and the error message displayed. This is in imperial units because it was never met for an international audience. The distance sanity check works ok for the thin sheet I use, it has never been tested on thick material that will not deform or rock under the pressure from the torch.

The best for someone doing hobby or job shop work will be a way to select whether to use ohmic sensing or the float switch. This could be a check box in a setup pane and/or a gcode command sent by the PP that depends on the selected tool.

Do you know if anyone has used the plasmac component on a live machine?

John