THC Stopped Working - Both THC Enabled and THC Active not illuminated

Gigabyte GB-BXBT-1900

little_sparky post=238966 userid=24582
So far I have tested
- Windows XP Home edition
- Windows 7 Home Premium
? I dont follow this part

My bad, these are the operating systems I found on the side of the computer and thought they were the models, they are a couple of old (2000-01) 32 bit desktop computers that were no good.

In searching a bit to see if there was anything I could suggest to try, I see you have gone through a lot of the options with PCW.

In this post:
forum.linuxcnc.org/plasmac/39317-watchdo...-bit?start=10#171559

He asked for the results of (later corrected to below in the last post):

halcmd show param *.tmax

Towards the end of the thread I started to get some 'ok' results and was able to get by for a while with the level of performance I was achieving. Eventually I ran into some new-ish problems and started a new thread. I should have probably linked the two together.

[code][code][code][code]One possible thing to check is if a slower servo thread helps, so you might try 2 ms
(2000000 ns) This will require changing all the PID P terms to 500

Have you tried this? This is necessary when running PlasmaC on a raspberry pi 4, and has no noticeable effect on performance.

[/code][/code][/code][/code]

I will definitely give this a go.

[code][code][code][code][code][code][code][code][code][code][code][code][code][code]The Dell 990 uses a 82579LM Ethernet chip, and I have seen some reports of this
being buggy and unreliable for realtime not sure if this is the issue here

If it is an issue an add-in Ethernet card should fix the problem
Also a possible solution.

[/code][/code][/code][/code][/code][/code][/code][/code][/code][/code][/code][/code][/code][/code]

Are you suggesting replacing the 82579LM with another 82579LM, or replacing the current with an aftermarker ethernet chip, something like  this
 

rodw wrote:

Sparky, there is an address here you can send your brix to here. www.vmn.com.au/
I'll try and get it going for you when I have a free moment. You can also contact me through that site via chat or the contact us page. 

 

Thanks heaps Rod! I will post it up soon. I will be very interested to see how you go with it. It will be good to rule out human error as the issue with someone who knows what they are doing taking control

THC Update 7/04/2022.

I have been monitoring the behaviour of the faulty THC for the last few days to see if I can find any patterns.

What I didnt realise at first is that on startup the 'THC Enabled' button is illuminated.

Once I start to run a job, the 'THC Enabled' stays on and the 'THC Active' lights up. For the first cut on any job the THC runs perfectly as it should. as the arc stops at the end of the first cut, both the 'THC Enabled' and 'THC Active' lights go out. The THC then stops working. Torch still works, arc volts are still read by PlasmaC when cutting next part, just no THC.

Does this point towards a post processor issue? Even though I haven't changed anything at all in that space.

I have played around with THC Enabled in the 'Materials Tab', THC Auto/Enabled, Auto Volts, VAD lock all on/off in the 'Run Tab' and have not noticed any difference. I have also checked sheetcam and doesn't appear as though I've hit any buttons I shouldn't have. The only thing I can think of is there is a new update I still need to run, perhaps it has disabled THC like some cars disable cruise control when the engine light comes on? Time to get to the mechanic 

Here is the backup and g-code file. 

Had to convert the .tap to a txt file.

 

 

Ah yes! I can see what you mean, I will turn that off and see what results I get

snowgoer540 wrote:

little_sparky wrote:

Are you suggesting replacing the 82579LM with another 82579LM, or replacing the current with an aftermarker ethernet chip, something like  this
 


In that thread PCW was saying that the 82579LM has some reported issues. He was suggesting the latter (buy a different card and disable the on-board 82579LM).

Yep, that's what I thought, was just checking to see if you had a different opinion to PCW. 

I also made the change in sheetcam and its working a treat. Damn, 1 little button can ruin everything. Thanks so much for your help.