I have a 20'x6'(6m x 1.8m) plasma that I'd like to convert to a water table. I plan on having a reservoir underneath that gets filled/drained with air pressure.
I have seen some water tables that have the water at the bottom of the sheet, but I've yet to see one that cuts underwater. How deep underwater does the plate need to be?
I guess I'm trying to figure out how deep the pan should be and how tall the slats should be.
The way the table is, it'd be fairly easy to make a 4"-6"(10-15cm) deep pan. It wouldn't be too hard to go deeper, but we're already at 100's of gallons and thousands of pounds at that depth.

My main reason for a water table is smoke control, but minimizing warping on sheet metal would be a plus.
I'm not certain I want underwater cutting, but I like the idea of it.

Some other questions.

How to keep sediment out of the reservoir? I thinking of having the last few inches of the pan go directly to the reservoir, with a sort of lip and screen. The upside of this would be easier fabrication, but that would also make the reservoir/pan one piece. Alternatively, I could use pipes, but I still don't know how I'd deal with sediment and I'm sure that would really increase the drain/fill time.

The building the plasma is in is unheated so I need a heater to keep the reservoir from freezing. I think a screw in or tri clamp element like you'd see in a residential water heater would be the best choice. How would I go about controlling the temp? I don't wanna reinvent the wheel if there are already off the shelf solution if anyone has a suggestion.

Any insights are appreciated.
 

I understand this currently comes with 8 digital inputs and 8 digital outputs, besides the analog I/O. If I later wanted to add additional inputs, would it be just a simple matter of stacking on additional input cards and updating my linuxcnc config, or would additional changes be needed?

Snowgoer- I get what your saying. I've heard enough "Can't you just...?" of my own. I know you can't please everyone, but I'm grateful for all your and everyone else's contributions.

I guess I'll see what I can do with axis. I do appreciate the plasmac statistics.
As a fabricator, most of my quoting involves chicken blood, planetary alignments and bs. I'll let you decide how much of each.

Does anyone quote by inches and pierces?

You can reverse the direction a motor goes, three ways: Swap one of the coil's wires between the driver and stepper, swap the DIR pins (or switch between DIR+/DIR- if you're not using both) between the mesa card and the driver, or change the software.
You do not need to do more than one of these.
I

Yes, thread order issues might not be noticed except that with
the step in position on the first index, a 1 servo thread delay
in position causes a huge spike.

It is arguable that this position step should not be present in the basic
motion hal pins, but is needed for compatibility with encoder counter
hardware that clears the count on index.

You guys are great, thanks. I will try your suggestions and will then put together all the files you asked for etc.
Thanks very much.

Is there an easy way to estimate a programs run time? I tried searching and couldn't find anything.
I know there is a stickied post on creating a sim, but that doesn't seem useful for quoting.

Thank you!

The comments and overall formatting you did I greatly appreciate, makes it much easier to follow for someone like me and I think I'm starting to get an idea of how most of it works, well atleast to some extent.

For now the spindle drive is always in position mode, it's just a servo drive/motor. It seems to work okay, but then again it's a bit early to tell.

I will test things on the actual machine in the upcoming days as it's a bit of a drive, but I have high hopes this time

I’m trying to tune my servos but I’m getting around 0.02mm ferror instantly regardless the speed which then quickly drops to a couple microns steady. Can you recommend a way to fix it or is it ok as is?

Oha SEW?
Wenn für dich die 512inc Encoder kein Problem sind und die Analog Ansteuern möchtest.
Kann ich dir meine Anbieten.
MDX61b mit Profibus Karte (dfb21b) komplett mit Kabeln und Motoren.
Könnten auch auf ethercat Hochgerüstet werden
 

Hey Leute,

hat jemand die Idee mit dem ThinkCentre und EtherCAT weiterverfolgt?

Ich habe mein System auf dem Raspi5 konfiguriert bin aber leider Hardwaretechnisch mit 2 Bildschirmen dort an sein ende gestoßen und wollte auf ein ThinkCentre M900 upgraden. Dieses Verfügt über den I219-LM Netzwerk Chip der EtherCAT fähig ist. Als ich jedoch das System oben hatte konnte ich den CAT nicht wie gewöhnlich also so wie ich es beim Raspi getan habe Online bringen. Gibt es Besonderheiten auf die zu achten sind?