Homemade, cheap, plasma CNC

rodw wrote:

There should only be a single point of truth and Sheetcam assumes it is that source. But Plasmac assumes the same too!

Not everyone uses SheetCam...

phillc54 wrote:

rodw wrote:

There should only be a single point of truth and Sheetcam assumes it is that source. But Plasmac assumes the same too!
Not everyone uses SheetCam...

Of course, thats understood.  The Sheetcam paradigm is  a lot older than Plasmac's so its good it can be used as it was intended. So thanks for adding the enabling feature...

 

Which one do you recommend?

one below your cursor

Thanks Phil,

I tried this tonight finally, unfortunately my code knowledge is limited to basic arduino.

The cnc computer isn't on the net so i'll just type in below what i have tried. spoiler alert, it didn't work.

HAL file

# external output signals

# - - - LASER - - -
net laser <= hm2_7i96.0.ssr.00.out-01

INI file
BUTTON_2_NAME = LASER
BUTTON_2_CODE =laser

This doesn't work and I get the following error
"Unknown word starting with a (big red circle with white X in it)"

Any guidance on how to make it work would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

A few things probably to get you there...

1. In the ini file, the BUTTON_2 lines are not necessary, as there is a LASER button that does this all by default. The button is not shown by default unless you specify a laser offset in the .ini file. You need to add the offset line in the [QTPLASMAC] section of the .ini file:


Where "offset" is the distance from the centerline of the torch to the laser's cross hairs.

2. The output pin needs to be netted to qtplasmac.laser_on in the .hal file, like this:


Unsure how old your config is, but if you used pncconf recently, you may be able to go back in and specify a laser offset, as well as pick a pin for the laser output, which should do everything I mentioned above automagically.

3. A better explanation of what I just typed, as well as a detailed explanation of how to use the LASER button is covered here: linuxcnc.org/docs/devel/html/plasma/qtplasmac.html#qt_laser

Let us know if you have any questions.