Arc OK intermitent issues on torch fire

Disconnect the wires from the transfer terminals of machine and check with an ohmmeter on the transfer terminals while attempting a cut.

luftlupus wrote: was cutting great with the new 1 resistor until this afternoon when i can only assume something has let the magic smoke go as when the torch tries to fire now there is no pilot arc or ArkOK signal coming back to the GUI. so maybe i have blown the transfer relay i am thinking.

This is exact behavior I saw with SSR vs Dry Contact relay (what your manual calls for as well) for controlling the torch firing.

Assuming your machine is still misbehaving, it's easy to test, in fact it's the way I discovered the problem by accident: Touch the two "torch on" wires together.

If the pilot arc starts reliably when it was otherwise not working, then that's the problem at least with the "the torch tries to fire now there is no pilot arc" part of the issue.

For my machine, it would reliably fire with touching the wires together. When I hooked it back to the SSR, it would intermittently fire. For reasons I don't understand, when it was wired to the SSR, whether or not the ground clamp was hooked to the table would increase or decrease reliably. After discovering that was the problem, I can take the ground clamp off the machine and it still produces a stout pilot arc.

I think it's worth a try to solve the "torch on" portion of your woes. It's cost free, other than time

phillc54 wrote: Disconnect the wires from the transfer terminals of machine and check with an ohmmeter on the transfer terminals while attempting a cut.

So when i have it all turned on and idle i put the ohm meter on the 24v and transfer input like so. with the ohm meter on the pins the ArkOK in the GUI comes on also which i would think is odd. When attempting a cut the air comes on and everything but the ohm reading does not change from what is in the picture.


Also have a constant 24v through the transfer back to the input while the machine is idle.

In the first pic the meter is not on ohms. it is on diode/buzzer mode

I meant for you to put the ohmmeter on the transfer terminals of the plasma cutter while it was not connected to the mesa card.

Both measurements on both the pictures are correct, the results are also correct, the only thing missing is when you say "attempt a cut" was it actually cutting something, preferably over 3mm thick?
If that was the case, the reading on the first picture should have gone from whatever it was to nearly 0.
To more accurately check that, do as Phill asked, disconnect the ARCOK wires, be it at the plasma or from the mesa board, use the same diode/buzzer check between those two wires and start cutting something, it should start buzzing and go to near 0.
If it does not, reverse the wires and try again.
Post pictures or values from both measurements.