Another plasma component...

phillc54 wrote:

Rod,
I don't quite understand what you are getting at here, why not just call the tool with M6 T112

Cheers, Phill

If that works then fantastic. It was not clear to me from your prior post that you would still be able to use a T command with an unlimited number of tools.

Can't wait to try this!

Dee

Please do not make any changes to the plasmac.hal file. You really need to keep it stock because of the rapid pace of change. Make all machine specific connections in your machine.hal file, this is why we use hal= twopass. If you need to connect a bit of machine specific hardware to one of the Glade files or handlers use the postgui.hal file.

John

islander261 wrote:

Dee

Please do not make any changes to the plasmac.hal file. You really need to keep it stock because of the rapid pace of change. Make all machine specific connections in your machine.hal file, this is why we use hal= twopass. If you need to connect a bit of machine specific hardware to one of the Glade files or handlers use the postgui.hal file.

John

I don't think Dee had added to the plasmac file but somewhere there was a duplicate signal. Hopefully Phill has him sorted.

Also hopefully, the pace of change will slow once Phill gets his tool handling in place. We must be getting to the end of it.

phillc54 wrote:

I am so looking forward to that.
Cheers, Phill.

Phill, you have been absolutely bloody amazing! (We Aussies are allowed to say that!). Not only have you had to contend with a fussy Islander who is very methodical (and knowledgeable) in his approach, you've had to contend with me and my crazy ideas. Somewhere you've also found time to guide people in how to implement your baby. Your ability to pick the eyes out of whats suggested and still give enough flexibility for people to configure the system to suit their workflow and their hardware is a rare skill. Finally, Linuxcnc is about to come of age in the world of Plasma thanks to you. I only hope the dev team are watching and are going to welcome a transition to master branch with open arms.

It so nice to be able to walk up to my machine and cut a part and know its going to work first time. Thank you for your tireless efforts.

Phill

I am in the process of building a very small plasma table. (600mm x 600mm or 24" x 24")

Do you have any pictures / video to show of your build?

Cheers
Bengt

Hi Phill

Thanks so much for the .ini, I was getting to the point of giving up on the plasma. I must say I have looked through the .ini file you sent me and even done a file compare against the one I had and cannot see what kind of magic you did to make it work. However after adding some stepgen_maxaccel and stepgen_maxvel entries, plasmac started up and I could see everything as expected in the various tabs.

One question, in the Z Axis section should the stepgen_maxaccel and stepgen_maxvel be double the values they are in the joint section?

Errors I got that I haven’t had time to investigate yet;
When I tried load sheet, I got an error “Invalid Parmas in linear command, linear move on line 23 would exceed joint 1’s positive limit” and “linear move on line 23 would exceed y’s positive limit”

When I hit the torch to top button the z axis exceeded the soft limit (I obviously need to slow It down a bit), I was then stuck, as when trying to select ignore limits I got an error stating “starting beyond soft limits” I had to un-home and re-home to get moving again.

Although I have not done a cut as yet I have run a number of tests using the metric wrench ngc, and have some hopefully helpful feedback. Apologies if these have been discussed, I have read every post over the last few weeks but don’t remember seeing these raised.

When testing probing on different thickness of steel, I wondered if safe height and probe height would be better based off the material rather than the Z min limit? Then again I guess if these values are set for the maximum material that the table will cut, then there is no chance to select the wrong material and have the torch crash into it.

If I start the gcode program and the torch is below safe height, it rapids to the first cut coordinates without first raising to safe height, after the cut is finished it raises to safe height rapids back to x0 y0 then appears to drop the torch down to prob height. Should z not always raise to safe height before a rapid? Then raise to max limit at the end of the program?

Once again thank you for the component and the help, I am hoping to try some cuts tomorrow.

Darren

Glad you are up and away

Dee436 wrote:

Hi Phill
One question, in the Z Axis section should the stepgen_maxaccel and stepgen_maxvel be double the values they are in the joint section?

These should be the same. They certainly can't be higher than what is physically possible.

Dee436 wrote:

Hi Phill
Errors I got that I haven’t had time to investigate yet;
When I tried load sheet, I got an error “Invalid Parmas in linear command, linear move on line 23 would exceed joint 1’s positive limit” and “linear move on line 23 would exceed y’s positive limit”

When I hit the torch to top button the z axis exceeded the soft limit (I obviously need to slow It down a bit), I was then stuck, as when trying to select ignore limits I got an error stating “starting beyond soft limits” I had to un-home and re-home to get moving again.

The gcode for the buttons are defined in the ini file. I get soft limit issues on loading sheets so I've been meaning to hard code the position to be a bit less than the actual maximum (eg 1mm less)

I also wold like to see the safe height and probe height to be set above the materials height