Feature Request

You could set up a button to do that.
I have one on my pendant.

Edit: or after you jog up just give a quick jog down, it doesn't need to be exact.

snowgoer540 wrote:

I guess the thing that is confusing me is that if my soft limit is set to -0.2 below where home was established, why am I allowed to jog past it?

No, your home is -0.2 below the soft limit.

Edit: The other problem is that currently we are suggesting that people park the torch at the top before starting a program, that wont be the case in this case.

Hence my mention of changing the docs earlier.

snowgoer540 wrote:

So then Home_Offset establishes the soft limit, and not Home? Maybe that's why I'm confused.

MAX_LIMIT set the soft limit. Your (new) Z is setup like:

1. Why did this cause following errors for myself and mud? You are correct, it solved the problem, I tried early evening to break it again. It doesn't make the high pitch gear change at the bottom when it retracts anymore. Sometimes, it does "bounce" (overshoot where it should have stopped and then settle back down) near where the torch started, but otherwise it works fine.

I don't understand the effect on following errors...
The way it works at the end of a cut is dependent on whether there is a following cut.
If a cut is following, at M5 it retracts to the safe height then waits at that height until the next M3 then it moves to probe or pierce height dependant on whether you are skipping IHS.
If there is no other cut then at M5 it retracts to the safe height. It stays at safe height until it gets a program stop signal. If there was a X/Y move before program stop it would do that at safe height. When it gets the program stop signal it moves to maximum height which is MAX_LIMIT - 5mm (0.1968") then it clears out any offsets. This makes it move to the height it was when the cut started. This may move the Z up or down depending on the relationship between the starting height and maximum height. This would be the "bounce" you refer to.

2. I've been trying to think of a way to eliminate the need to make a manual jog down from the soft limit. I don't know what I don't know, so forgive me, but here's what I came up with:
a. Some sort of code that sets whatever the HOME value is set to as the "top of travel" for Plasmac purposes. Maybe that's more difficult than I am making it, but basically once you home, it sets the soft limit, then parks the torch at Home (-0.2"), and you can never jog past this while Plasmac is running.
b. Similar to a., but if you started the torch at the top of travel too close to the soft limit, instead of sending the torch back there, it would send it to -0.2 from the machine home coordinate.

Unfortunately because we cannot control what the GUI jog buttons do it is out of our hands, we can only fit in with what is there. When (if) we get our own GUI then we would be able to do it "properly". There is no problem with jogging to the top then jog down a "bit". You may or may not get a "bounce" at the end of the final cut but it is not an issue even though it may look a bit ugly.

snowgoer540 wrote:

So I think I get what it does, but I don't fully understand why starting from a point near the soft limit causes problems.

It is not the starting near it, it is the finishing near it.

If it clears its offset 5mm from the soft limit, wouldn't mean that it wasn't near the offsets when offsets were being used? So, instead of doing the last move to park the torch wherever it was when the whole works started, why cant we just leave it at MAX_LIMIT - 5mm? Then, it would seem, it wouldn't matter where you started the cut from?

It moves to soft limit -5mm then it clears the remaining offset. That is the move that puts it back where it started from.

I'll attempt a better description tomorrow when the brain is a it fresher.