Suggestion QtPlasma and PlasmaC

tommylight wrote:

I just watch the laser while jogging manually, leaving the torch up.

+ one , the red laser is so handy

exactly. With a laser, you don't move Z once your distance from nozzle to material is set. for me that's 10mm with my current lense. Now lightburn has an option where you press the shift key and then the frame button. this causes the laser to fire (diode) as it's going around the extents. This is probably not something we'd want with plasma, although turning on the laser pointer while framing would be something.

My computer's are about 10-20ft away from the laser and plasma machines. So the framing option would be ideal especially if there was a pin that would cause the frame to happen. it could then be turned on with my whb04 wireless.

Let's say you have a piece of metal which has a location that looks like it might fit the current project but the piece of metal needs to be turned in order to make the cut. You could do this in your design program and then fudge around with program extents and jogging or press a button to frame the project allowing you to make the adjustment's to get it on the metal easily. I don't know about where you are, but sheet metal is expensive and I know I want to use EVERY piece I can to the fullest.

phillc54 wrote:

crowloy wrote:

This is probably not something we'd want with plasma, although turning on the laser pointer while framing would be something.

That is the way I was thinking, enable the laser pointer pin then move around the bounding rectangle also taking into account the laser pointer offsets.

This sounds perfect!

nice helpful addition, thanks

Although tracing a rectangle is helpful, it doesn't really benefit for tightly packed shapes which are not rectangular. I, too, like to maximize the amount of cuts I get out of a particular piece of material so I will often rotate the gcode to make sure it fits in the perfect spot left on the material. In this case, a rectangular trace will not tell me if it is actually safe or not. A trace of the last cut will do so.

I suggest leaving the rectangular option for quick checks, but also including the option to trace all of the X/Y movements after the last M03 command to M05. This assumes that the last M03 is for the perimeter of the part. I realize this doesn't help when there are multiple parts being cut in a single job, that's where the rectangular trace will be better, or a dry run of the entire job will need to be done.