Plasmac 7i76e thcad 10 will not probe

For a first step, jog to the top of the Z axis and do a touch off but set the value to the maximum travel for your Z axis. eg if that is 86mm, enter 86 when you touch off. That will make your bottom of travel 0.0. That may fix some problems. Never touch it again!

Try that and report back.

The probe test button was designed to check if there was a shorted torch with ohmic sensing in use. You can try jogging the Z down until the float switch triggers and pressing the probe test then. I'm not sure if it does anything for float switches.

G38 probing is not used with plasmac.

So you need to check your connections.hal file to make sure you have connected your float switch to plasmac. I'll leave otheres advise you there. I'll probably get it wrong.

"Foldaround wrote:

Im at a loss thank you in advance for any help

Can you compress your config directory and post it here

Edit: Please post Plasmac questions in the PlasmaC section of the forum.

rodw wrote:

The probe test button was designed to check if there was a shorted torch with ohmic sensing in use. You can try jogging the Z down until the float switch triggers and pressing the probe test then. I'm not sure if it does anything for float switches.

That is ohmic test Rod, probe test does a complete probe cycle (or it should)

Thx Rodw and phillc54,

I am going to repost over in the plasmac section with my config files.

Hi all,

First off thank you all for helping me get to this point! So much information on this site its been awesome!

This is where Im at:
All axis are homing and are calibrated ( I can run .ngc files if I remove the torch cut commands)
Plasmac is configured for mode 0
Float switch triggers correctly
I have setup the thcad 10 to read and display proper Voltages in axis
I can manually fire the torch from the axis control panel

So here is the problem I can not get the machine to probe (using the float switch on the floating head)
because of this anytime I try to run a full .ngc file from the examples it gets stuck at the M3 $0 S1 command and the "probe test" button does nothing. No errors just counts down from 30.

Ive tried changing my Z home config numbers
I noticed that the probe feed rate was at 0 so I messed with that with no change
Ive changed the probe start height with no change.
If I run the probe G38.2 command I can get it to start moving but I dont have the "Probe in" setup from the base file so it doesn't trigger but Im sure it would if I changed the input pin to what I have setup in plasmac as float.
I figure plasmac configures the float switch to something like probe in for me idk.

Float or probe only comes up a few times the .hal .ini or connections.hal nothing seems wrong.

Im at a loss thank you in advance for any help

Thanks for getting back to me phillc54 Ive included my config folder.

Try commenting out this line in your test15.ini

So when that line is # out linuxcnc throws an error during launch (Im not near the machine right now or I would get you that error).

I was having to manually change that line for it to run.

Oddly enough at first linuxcnc would only crash if I had the "Run Tab" selected in the plasmac reconfigurer instead of "Run Panel" . Then it started to crash both ways.

If it is giving an error message then it would be good to know what that error message is.

Your config runs fine here with that line commented out.

Ok I plan to be working on it all day tomorrow. Ill post the errors then.

Thanks again Phill!

No worries.

I tried your config again and it runs with either a run panel or a run tab.

If using a run tab you need it like this:
If using a run panel you need it like this:If you don't comment out both lines you will get an error like "Invalid tab configuration" in the terminal and the config will not be completely loaded.