Retrofitting an old industrial CNC Plasma table

Hi everyone, i have an industrial cnc plasma table made by CR Electronic on wich the numerical contol has stopped working and i would like to try and retrofit it with linux cnc and QTPlasmaC interface..
it has 3 axis for the usual X,Y,Z movements and then an additional axis named "K" that is basically a slave to the X axis. it is a tray connected to the air extraction/filtration system that travels underneath the table to catch all the sparks and fumes made when cutting.
it has servomotors on all axis with analog/digital drives controlled with  +/-10V

i have a few question that i'd like to ask before getting started with the retrofit:

What board should buy?
since it has the analog drives i think the ideal board for this retrofit would be the the Mesa 7i97T  combined with a THCAD2 for the THC control.
the plasma currently has a proprietary board wich handled the thc control and the Z axis motion. also it has ohmic sensing and torch breakaway detection. the voltage signal comes from the plasma generator wich is a Hypertherm HD3070 and outputs direct plasma voltage to the thc control, so i'll have to put a high voltage resistor prior to the THCAD2 board.

Do i need 1 or 2 THCAD2 board?
i've read multiple topics about retrofits on cnc plasma tables on the forum but can't figure out if i need to get 1 or 2 boards to combine with the 7i97T Board. can the 7i97T take the input from the plasma voltage to control the THC? or do i need to use the THCAD2 board an then connect the frequency output to the 7i97T? also since it has ohmic sensing and torch breakaway detection wich are 2 wires that trigger two different things, when the torch breakaway circuit opens it senses that the torch disconnected from it's magnetic base and for the ohmic sensing it had another wire on wich when the torch touched the metal plate it closed a circuit and sent the signal to the old thc board that the metal plate was found and the zero was set. can the torch breakaway wire and the ohmic sensig wire be connected directly to the 7i97T board or would i need another THCAD2 Board to have these 2 functions?

Z axis motor:
the old cnc control THC board controlled the Z axis motor wich is powered by 24VDC and since i will be removing that board i won't have a driver for that motor to use, i wanted to replace it with a new servomotor and i've seen the "stepperonline" 100w 230Vac servomotor with his dedicated analog drive,  would that be compatible to be controlled by the Mesa 7i97T? i'll add a picture and the manual to that. 

How to wire the analog servo drives to the 7i97T?
i've read multiple times the manual for the 7i97T board but i'm struggling a little bit to wrap my head around how i should connect the motor drives to the I/O board. i have all the wiring diagrams of the machines wich are very detailed so i've been able to locate all the encoder wires plus the +/- 10v signal and 0V. i still have to understand how to connect the drives to the board correcty.. it seems to have a circuit on the X and Y drive wich is 24VDC generated by the drives for the drive enable signal. i'll add pictures at the end of this topic.

Are all of the current motor drivers on the machine compatible with the 7i97T?
the X and Y axis use the same model of motor driver wich is a TDE-Macno DMBL7 i'll add the manual for that at the end of the topic.
the K axis has a Axor industries mini magnum  MM230T 6/12 drive, i'll add pictures of that too.
this is the new Z axis motor and driver that i'm looking to get. Motor: A6M40-100L2A1-M17 Driver: A6M40-100L2B1-M17 i'll attach the manual and a few pictures of this too. 

Is a Raspberry PI5 suitable for the application?
i wanted to make sure before buying one that the Raspberry PI5 is suitable for my application or if it would be better to get a normal pc.

Thank you in advance for the help.



 

I'll add the missing pictures / manuals here since i could only attach 8 to the original post.

If you use shielded tips so the bare electrode does not connect the material, I would use a second THCAD for material probing.
ONe user here stated it was crazy fast and saved a lot of time...

thank you for the information Rod. mine has an hpr 130 torch on it and it uses technical gases while cutting, it is dual shielded. the probing happnens from the outer shield on wich the copper consumable touches the table and completes the loop with the ground cable. the wire for probing is connected to the outer shield itself, i can send a picture tomorrow if needed. i'll order two THCAD boards. how would i proceed to connect the one used for probing to the Mesa 7i97T? is it the same as voltage sensing? connected to an encoder input?

This example config include a separate ohmic.hal and the hypersensing component is in the components folder.
github.com/rodw-au/showstopper