Help with Mesa 6i25-7i76-thcad10 plasma cutter

I am using Linuxcnc and Mesa boards for the first time. Previous machines have used gecko and mach3 and been mainly 3 axis mills.
The plasma tableI have built is roughly 8’x4’ has shared limits and home switches on each axis. There is also a floating torch holder with normally closed switch, plus a seperate normally closed switch that activates if the magnetic torch holder is disconnected (this is connected to tb6 input 6 but not yet working). For the moment I have a single e-stop switch connected to a tb6 input and set as estop. The plasma machine is a technical arc opticut 65 and I am using 6i25 in 5i25 mode + 7i76 + thcad 10. The 6i25 x7i76 and cable were bought as a configured set from Mesa.

So far I have used pncconf to get to a point where I can home and jog all axis. I have also written and run some simple gcode that touches off using G38.2 then raises to pierce height, plunges to cut height, then air cuts a square.

I have the cnc port of my opticut 65 connected to the Thcad 10 input (opticut 65 has a 33:1 divider), arc ok output is connected to tb6 input 7, and torch on/off is connected to spindle ena+/ena-
I have also worked out the offsets for the thcad as per the manual but have yet to verify they are accurate.

I am now totally stuck, I have gone through many threads on here that show how to start the torch using net spindle-on motion.spindle-on => hm2_5i25.0.7i76.0.0.spinena, how to utilise the arc ok via net start-motion-input thc.arc-ok <= motion.digital-in-00 <= hm2_5i25.0.7i76.0.0input-06, but when I add any of the commands in the threads to the hal, linuxcnc doesn’t start and gives errors regarding axis 2 already defined or assigned, digital 00 not existing etc.

I am not yet understanding how all the various hal and Ini files hang together and although I am eager to learn and fully understand I just want to make some progress so I can start to use the machine.

Can anyone help me to simply trigger the torch via m3/m5 and use tb6 input 7 to signal arc ok for use with an m66 wait command.

I can worry about the thcad and everything else later. I have attached the hal file generated by pncconf that works as is, albeit without any torch or thc control.

Welcome, sound like you have got a long way on your own. If you show hal configuration (by opening halshow or by a menu option) you will see all of the pins in the system. On the 7i76 there is a spindle on relay. Connect your torch to it. (I use an output and an external relay) but I see mesa suggest using the spindle relay.

Lets start with turing the torch on and off with M3/M5. There is an internal pin called motion.spindle-on whihc goes true on an M3 and off on a M5 so it would be pretty cool if we could make that trigger the spindle relay. that will look something like this (but there might be a few other references to motion.spindle-on you need to delete as duplicates will create errors.
So lets define our own signal for torch-on and hook that up to the signal relayIf that generates an error, comment it out and use halshow to find the correct 7i76 pin name.
Once you get this right, from within the mdi window, typing m3 followed by m5 should turn the torch on and off.

So now you need to hook up the arc ok signal on input 7
Once again we will create our own signal and send it to the correct pin..
so now you just need a touch off routine.
BigJohnT has an example touchoff.ngc file on this page
gnipsel.com/shop/plasma/plasma.xhtml

You just need to call it from your gcode program and pass the correct parameters

Watch all of these pins in halshow to make sure they are turning on as expected.

Thank you Rod

I have the will to live again. I followed what you said, and although its too late to run the machine now, show hal configuration shows both signals now working as expected.
That seemed very simple compared to the dead end I had hit earlier, I am going to read the sections in the manual to fully understand what happened there, but it’s looking like I will be moving into the thcad sooner than I though.

Thanks again