Another plasma component...

Guess I was just confused because my home switch is all the way up. So going down in the Z is negitive. I was getting confused on how to set the z so it knows where to rapid to befor probing. When I ran a wire edm I used g92 a lot. It was nice because I would probe a hole and run g92 which would set its current position as XY zero. Is that the same in the plasma world. The reasion I was using a G54 was because my home position is all the way back and to the right so any move from that point is in the negitive direction.

So going down in the Z is negitive. That is correct. Z down is negative. Home switch for plasma z is often not used. Probe switch is more important for z.

G92 is almost the same. It is handy for temponary offset's. I use it for milling machine's. To offset some program's.
For plasma i don't use G92 at all, no need to at custom plasma technique.

so any move from that point is in the negitive direction.
If you have a plasma machine, one corner of the machine is always your lowest x,y value. If your plate is at the table and you move to the start corner of your plate. You will moving positive in x and y direction, if not, inverse your x or y axis.

JTK, I have a similar problem where top is 0mm and the bottom is -84mm.
For plasmac, I just use the Gmocappy touchoff to touchoff at 84mm (with G54) so that puts 0 where it should be. I used to do the same pre plasmac with a G92 but plasmac startup code clears these.
This does not get reset between sessions but a plasmac upgrade does zero it out.

On my z I have a home/limit switch and a float switch and the ohmic. I HAVE to have the Z limit switching working because my torch handle extends under the Y axis and if i retract to far it will crash into the bottom of the y axis. I was not planning on having it face this way but i ran short on length and had to. I could possibility strip the torch handle down and straighten it out and that would give me the length.

Could you not invert the Z axis so positive is down?

I had problems with the plasmac way too but this is easy to solve. jog down to whatever zero point you want to use (eg. just under the slats) and in Gmocappy click on the blue touchoff Z button and set it to Zero and you are done.

So then jog back to the upper limit and note the Z DRO coordinates (say it is 4 inches). Next time you have to reset it, jog back to this top limit (or straight after homing and touch off the Z but this time enter 4" so there is no need to jog down to the zero point.

Just set the Plasmac probing height so that you are high enough above the zero point so you clear the material. You'll never worry about the Z position again.

How are you guys tricking the arc ok. I have been trying to cut for the last few hrs and all I do is pop a hole and it alarms out saying no arc detected. My voltage looks good on the THCAD10. Is there a way to just delete that function?

I can see the text from a button that’s not there asking for arc ok voltage. But there is nothing there to click on.

JTknives wrote:

I can see the text from a button that’s not there asking for arc ok voltage. But there is nothing there to click on.

I suspect that is hidden becasue of the Plasmac mode you have selected. Check the notes in the ini file. That might have been a bit my fault becasue I probably assumed you have an arcOK signal when I wrote my how to.

I looked through the plasma config files and found the callouts for buttons and found the options and option 1 had the arc voltage set to “hide”. I thought I had been told to be using option 1 but after looking at the config file I switched to option 0 and all is good. And it’s cutting sweet.