Using Plasmac to draw with a marker

Good afternoon.

I have a client who wanted to see what a sign would look like before she had me cut it. I figured the easiest way to do this was with a spring loaded marker holder, which i designed and 3D printed. I set out in Fusion and created a file with the engrave command which traced the lines perfectly. I opened the file and removed all of the erroneous M commands, as well as some other stuff I knew Plasmac wouldnt like.

The only problem is that Plasmac has commented out all of the Z moves. I know it does that because M3 triggers a routine to handle all of the touch offs. My question is, is there a way to enable them again, so that I can use the trace command to use a marker and not have a ton of erroneous lines? I can see myself using this new marker tool a lot, as it would be handy not only with showing clients, but also plate layout, marking hole patterns, etc.

I am trying to avoid having an entire LinuxCNC install dedicated to a marker.

Any thoughts?

-Greg

Create a simple config for your machine, well you should already have that so you can start that config when you need the pen. No need to install Linux again, Linuxcnc can have as much configs as you can create .

If you comment out the following section in the ini file then PlasmaC won't make any changes to the loaded program.

Although if you are going to be making Z moves then I think it would be better to follow Toms suggestion.

Ah, I guess that’s what I meant by more linuxcnc installs. It’s not a huge deal, easy enough. New config “marker” it is. Thanks for the replies!

phillc54 wrote:

If you comment out the following section in the ini file then PlasmaC won't make any changes to the loaded program.

Maybe Plasmac could use block delete rather than comment for Z moves?

(I know that LinuxCNC supports block-delete, and there are buttons in the GUIs, but I have not found any docs on it in a manual newer than 2.3)

Found it: linuxcnc.org/docs/2.7/html/gcode/machini...:block-delete-switch

What about
/
Axis has a button for ignoring lines starting with
/
That can be used for many things, one of them was in axis splash screen where it would hide or show a part under the EMC2 logo, i think it was "powered by linux" or.....

Another option may be to set you marker up like a scribe.

linuxcnc.org/docs/devel/html/plasma/plas...er-guide.html#scribe