Plasmac GUI Screen Edit

Hi All,

I have had a chance to play around with the Plasmac GUI screens and I would like to modify the Gmoccapy screen to suit my workflow,

1) I would like to be able to jog the machine with the arrow keys on the keyboard and the z axis with PgUp and PgDn.

2) I would like to be able to home the axises without home switches, I want to be able to jog the machine to a section of plate, Home the axis through the software and run the program from that position, CommandCNC has this feature and I use it alot.

3) How do I disable the Plasmac test pop up box?

4) How do I set the bottom z axis limit? I want to set it below 0.

Will I have to create a new screen to add these functions?
If anyone can point me in the right direction I would appreciate it.

1. is a function of Gmoccappy so perhaps ask in the Gmoccappy section. Norbert the developer is usually very responsive. But Gmoccappy has been designed to be used with touch screens. Does the plasmac axis sim support this? See my notes re jogging later in this post for a much better solution.

2. It is possible to tell Linuxcnc to do immediate homing but you need homing switches to square the gantry using joint axis functionality of master branch. You can square the gantry by making changes to HOME_OFFSET. The correct way to set the start position (I have learnt this week) is to use the touchoff buttons in gmocappy which sets the G54 offsets. This has been discussed at length as I learnt about this in the "Another plasma component" thread over the last few days.. Gmocappy supports macros and its on my todo list to write a script that will zero X & Y offsets with one mouse click Todd shared a snippet that does this on his routers which I linked to on the plasmac thread mentioned earlier.

3. I've never seen that so it must be part of the SIM. Actually, when i think about it, Its loaded by a line in the .ini file so just comment it out.

Regarding jogging, the Mesa 7i76e supports 2 MPG's so you could use one for axis jogging and the other for Y axis jogging. I outlined a detailed how to on my Spaceship Plasma build thread. The MPG dials are only $20-$30 each.

BUT: Because you are in a production environment. I would strongly recommend you grab a 433 Mhz wireless pendant like the one that I use. This is 100% compatible with the Mesa 7i76e and has a relay box receiver that you wire in to various inpouts and outputs. My table is 1/2 your size and I would be lost without it. Because it has a 6 axis jog wheel I want to use one MPG selection for the plasmac reverse run if I can., I'll send you an email with more detail but its on my build thread somewhere. This is a serious production quality unit with none of the problems of USB pendants. Today I bought some full sheets of steel and cut them down to suit my half sized table and aligned the sheets against the tip of the torch so I was going from one end of the table to the other so the pendant jogging was so handy.

So I think I've solved all of your problems without doing what you asked for

Thanks Rod,

The axis branch does indeed allow jogging with the arrow buttons,

My last question,

How do I set the bottom z axis limit? I want to set it below 0. Is this set in the hal or ini?

thefabricator03 wrote:

How do I set the bottom z axis limit? I want to set it below 0. Is this set in the hal or ini?

Its all in the .ini file. I still have not really got that sorted. I have the top of my Z axis at 0 and Z min at -84mm
With Plasmac, the Z comes to rest at the top of the axis so I've just touched off for Z at 84mm. If I touched off at 80mm, that would mean Z min would be -4mm

You can use G92 to lock that in between sessions but the default Plasmac startup code clears G92 offsets so you'd need to edit the startup file to delete the G92.1

'03

You can configure Gmoccapy to use keyboard shortcut keys. Look in the Gmoccapy threads about keybindings.

The way CommandCNC handles machine homing is another legacy hold over from Mach based systems. Gmoccapy works like a commercial mill controller that doesn't have absolute encoders on the axis. You home the machine on startup and then place your work piece on it and set the working offsets of your choice to the work piece origin. That is how both of my old commercial mills work and my plasma table. With your giant machine you can mount several work pieces each with a different set of offsets and have the program activate the correct new set of offset when it changes work pieces all while being protected by the machine limits. You can enforce immediate homing on startup (current machine position is machine 0,0,0) and use G92 offsets but then you don't have soft limits. You set this up in your .ini. Look at the one the CommandCNC configuration program generated for your system.

I used the run from line function on the Gmoccapy Plasmac branch yesterday and it worked! The down side is the start from line was remembered when I loaded a new program! So to clear the run from line number I had to select the run from line button. If you feel that you need this often I suggest putting all of your preamble code into your .ini so it is in place for every program or put a M0 or M1 at the end of your program preamble so you can jump to the desired location after setting the machines modal state.

John

first you shoudt get a look on the already existing
people already working hard on there plasma gui

then use VCPPYQT the ner gui system as from 2.8

and you may not need a extra