Another plasma component...

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

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)

Not sure if this would work
BUTTON_2_CODE = G53 G0 Z[[AXIS_Z]MAX_LIMIT - nn] (with nn being the distance delow max height)

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.

I intend to revisit probing later, I am not completely happy with 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?

The plasmac component only starts doing it's thing when it receives a torch on signal so at the moment it does expect that the user has everything in position ready to go. It may be possible in future to do something about that...

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

That I am not sure about, Dewey Garrett the author of 'external offsets' would be the person to ask. It probably wouldn't hurt though.

EDIT1:
There is no mention of these settings in the [AXIS_<letter>] section of the ini file, only in the [JOINT_<num>] section so my guess is they are not required in the [AXIS_<letter>] section.
Are these stepgen settings even required for hardware stepgens or only for the software stepgen component?

EDIT2:
Darren, your config is looking for these settings in the [AXIS_<letter>] section: To my way of thinking (probably wrong) they should be in the [JOINT_<NUMBER>] section like: and the [AXIS_<letter>] section kept to a bare minimum as in the docs .


Cheers, Phill.

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

I don't. Photos I could and should do but I can't do videos yet as doing this configuration has stalled my build.

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

Safe height is first calculated as the height above the material at a successful probe. If THC is enabled then safe height is updated to account for any rise in Z so that it ends up being calculated as the height above the highest point encountered.

Probe height is the height above the Z minimum, as posted above I will revisit that.


Cheers, Phill.