Powermax 45xp lost arc delay (Solved)

snowgoer540 wrote:

robertspark wrote:

you probably want to remove you email from the forum or you'll end up being spammed a load of xxxx

Whoops, good call. Sometimes I’m too trusting I guess. Forget there’s a bunch a party poopers out there.

Too late, I sold it on the dark web...

Just joking but the forum is public even if not logged in and there are spiders and bots out there whose whole purpose in life is to harvest emails... Pisses me off as I can't even publish a sales email on my web site!

I took your email and signed you up for the church of scientology...so have fun with that one! My consumable life and cut quality has actually been really good since I stopped pulsing the torch in the air to check the arc. I haven't had any complaints since I stopped doing that. I'm still going to switch over to the mechanical relay per hypertherm, and Greg's recommendation, and see what happens.

Updated the OP with the Solution in my case. Thanks everyone for their help on this.

Nick7251 wrote:

Updated the OP with the Solution in my case. Thanks everyone for their help on this.

Thanks for the update. Its interesting that the problem here a few have reported is finally identified and not related to mechanical relays vs SSR's.

So my guess is there is some contact bounce on a slow relay allowed Plasmac to think the signal had dropped out. Perhaps Plasmac should ignore ArcOK dropouts for the first 20-500ms but I guess the debounce is doing that.

rodw wrote:

rodw wrote:

I decided to try using my Mesa 7i76e spindle relay while we are exploring this thread but I will post on another thread about that as I had some errors...

Actually I resolved my error and its possibly relevant so I will post here.
I changed my torch on relay to be the 7i76e spindle enable relay. Removed the plasma cutter wires from my relay and connected to TB4-5 and tb4-6. Once I powered up the 7i76e, the torch came on unexpectedly so I switched off the plasma cutter. Then started up in a more orderly fashion and got a startup error from the plasma cutter which is described in the manual

Active Low seemed interesting and I was aware these digital relays are polarised so I swapped the wires around on the 7i76e and it is working perfect.

So I wonder if problems some people have been having using digital relays is becasue they have the wrong polarity?

I'm going to leave it this way and see how it goes...

I did a search for "diode" on each page of the thread after the above was mentioned but nothing came up so I assume the following has not been mentioned.
Components like MOSFET transistors, which is what MAY be used as the "contact" in a SSR relay, or the outputs on Mesa boards, often have an internal diode across them. It's polarity is reversed so that it does not conduct when the MOSFET is wired the correct way. However, when it's wired backwards, it's effectively a conducting diode (i.e. a short circuit or closed switch) across the SSR output. If that is what is causing it then polarity is everything in some SSRs. I won't go as far as saying all SSRs because I simply don't know, but if the output is polarised make sure it's connected correctly.

Keith

Beefy, could you share the map of connections to the Mesa pins and the CPC now you have the correct polarity? It would be good to have a definitive mapping for a Hypertherm machine.