setting up thcad

Your configuration looks OK. The only odd thing I see is that your Voltage Scale in the Config Panel is 0.000003, that is quite a bit lower than I would have thought. Although having said that I would have thought that the GUI would show a very low voltage.

What are the parameters you used to calculate that and did you use the online calculator ?

Do you have the THCAD jumpers set for UNIPOLAR and F/32?

I can't read the image you posted, by the time it is large enough for me to see it is too pixelated to decipher anything.

At least you can see that I looked at your config

Did you check the jumpers?

I couldn't see any other obvious issues. It may be worth updating although I don't think that will resolve your problem.

Check and recheck your wiring, do you have a better image to post.

EDIT: I found another pic here but it is too pixelated as well.

Aaron3309 wrote:

Sorry i was experimenting with the voltage scale and forgot to put it back, with the .0000003 it shows zero volts at idle but wont show more than maybe a volt when the torch fires. The real setting i use based on calculations is .01888574 which when used shows widely varying voltages even at idle.

I had a similar problem with a THCAD 300. And it went away with switching to a THCAD 10. I’m not sure which card you’re using, But part of me wonders if there was something wrong with the 300 card. Mine varied like 30 volts at idle without any connection to the hypertherm.

When you have LinuxCNC running if your Arc Voltage is jumping about with your plasma machine of then open a terminal and enter:

this will disconnect the 7i96 encoder from PlasmaC so if the voltage is now stable then the encoder is 'seeing' something.