Is this QTPlasmac Expected behaviour - Cycle Start and Jog disabled.

tommylight wrote:

That is not a big deal at all, the big deal is an issue dragged from PlasmaC that occurs only occasionally and at random and figuring it out will not be easy, so since we are here :
-Normal cutting 3mm plate,
-everything works,
-after several successful cuts there happens to be one cut that will start OK and proceed with the THC active (LED) but Z axis DRO will remain at 3mm (cut height)
-- the Z axis is moving down but the DRO remains at 3mm
-- the THC voltage keeps dropping down and that is OK considering the above,
-- the down LED will be active and pushing the torch down dragging through material till the float switch triggers and the cutting stops,
-Resuming cutting works perfectly with THC active and working properly
This happens at random, today after 9 successful cuts and sometimes it does not happen for days, same thing was happening on PlasmaC with Axis GUI on two machines, and again this is on two machines, one of them is not the same, so total 3 machines and over 4 months period.
Short of setting up a rig to test this, i was not able to find anything else, so the only thing to go by is the Z axis moving down but showing 3mm on the DRO.
Phill is going to boil me ...

rodw wrote:

snowgoer540 wrote:

tommylight wrote:

Did not have that behaviour yet, but i did have one where e-stop was red and the machine was homing as usual.
Had to do F1 again for it to go yellow.

The easiest solution to that is to not have a GUI estop. Hardware estops make the most sense to me.

If I could have worked out how, I would have. I'll have another look.
I have not even tried to cut something yet. I cut 3 sheets before I changed it over just in case!

#  ---estop signals---
net estop-out     <=  iocontrol.0.user-enable-out
net estop-ext     =>  iocontrol.0.emc-enable-in
net estop-ext     <=  hm2_7i96.0.gpio.009.in

phillc54 wrote:

On my table I use ESTOP_TYPE = 1 which is an indicator only. This is all I have in my hal file.

#  ---estop signals---
net estop-out     <=  iocontrol.0.user-enable-out
net estop-ext     =>  iocontrol.0.emc-enable-in
net estop-ext     <=  hm2_7i96.0.gpio.009.in

I don't actually use the estop-out signal for anything.

rodw wrote:

The disabling cycle start and jog buttons is more of a concern. I rarely use the screen to jog

phillc54 wrote:

rodw wrote:

The disabling cycle start and jog buttons is more of a concern. I rarely use the screen to jog

Oh, so are you referring to external hardware buttons?

rodw wrote:

From what Snowgoer said, it sounded like it was an issue earlier so perhaps there is a regression.

tommylight wrote:

Not sure about the Active LED, the voltage dropped to 80V and the plasma started grouling a lot, that why i turned to look what is going on, yeaterday is the first time i was near it when that happened, otherwise i would just see the float switch triggered warning for no reason and continue cutting.
Float switch triggering on machines with 20CM of Z axis movement and at least 5cm of it below slats is always strange.
As for plots, that i will try to do, given how lucky i am it will never happen !

tommylight wrote:

I agree.
The trouble with it is that the nozzle gets ruined when that happens, so a quick change should be done before proceeding.
Thinking of how to go abut testing and plotting this ...