Another plasma component...

Phill, thanks for your notes on corrugated iron. Your rule of thumb is not that far away from what Dewey calculated at 4300 mm/sec. The slope of course varies (tangential to the curve) and Dewey worked out the maximum velocity required. I think I'll drop back to 4000 mm/min. That will be 2810 mm/sec and 400 mm/sec/sec. Looks like the Plasmac speed setting is able to go to the maximum but is set to 80% of that right now.

It would be nice to use an unshielded tip becasue it has a lot less mechanical interference than the shielded one as it has an open pencil shaped tip. But then I won't be able to use ohmic sensing to find the surface. Anyway, I'll give it a go one day soon. It would be nice to just work up to the machine and prove it works first go so I wanted to do some homework on these settings first.

If this doesn't work sounds like I'll have to lean on Tommy to send me or lend me a Lam Technologies stepper motor..

rodw wrote: Looks like the Plasmac speed setting is able to go to the maximum but is set to 80% of that right now.

No, THC is ALWAYS allowed 100% of available velocity.
The setup speed spinbox is for the height changes for moving to cut-height, probe-height, pierce-height etc.

If you hover over the spinbox, the tooltip will show you that.

Cheers, Phill

@Phill,

I have a little idea for you to investegate, only when you have time or are interested in the suggestion.

It would be nice to replace the gremlin cone (tool) or tube (when tool select) for a plasma torch head. :laugh:
In fact it's the expansion of some gremlin source code. The cone object itself is problably a few lines of code for shaping the cone.
If we replace this shape code for a plasma torch, this would be realistic or not?

A quick question. Where and how are you guys calling out your axis limit switches. I have my float switch working but my XYZ Reed switches and not. When I look in the machine.hal I see reference to limit switches but no place to spec a pin as thy are labeled as joint. Also how do I use a single limit switch as a homing switch and limit switch. Thanks guys - JTK

@JT,

In your hal file you can specify your limit switches. For your pin's open your linuxcnc application and open up halmeter to see what pin's are availble for your interface card. So look at your card.. and i/o names... You can write them down for practice.

net both-home-x1 <= lcec.0.digital_input.din-2 #(lcec.blabla is my sensor pin on left machine side x axis)
net both-home-x2 <= lcec.0.digital_input.din-3 #(lcec.blabla is my sensor pin on right machine side x axis)
net both-home-x1 => joint.0.home-sw-in
net both-home-x2 => joint.1.home-sw-in

This above is one way. But you the same will be :

net yourname => joint.0.home-sw-in => lcec.0.digital_input.din-2
Or without => sign's, use tab's instead :
net yourname joint.0.home-sw-in lcec.0.digital_input.din-2 ( in your case it could be mesa.0.digital_input.din-2 )

Above is all the same connnected, but you can connect in different way's.

JTknives wrote: A quick question. Where and how are you guys calling out your axis limit switches. I have my float switch working but my XYZ Reed switches and not. When I look in the machine.hal I see reference to limit switches but no place to spec a pin as thy are labeled as joint. Also how do I use a single limit switch as a homing switch and limit switch. Thanks guys - JTK

JTK, its all described in the doc believe it or not.
linuxcnc.org/docs/devel/html/config/ini-homing.html
Just look in halshow and look for the pin names for each joint
With V2.8 homing is per joint.
For shared limit/homing You probably will need