Homemade, cheap, plasma CNC

sometimes you can use disc recovery software (I have been successful in the past sometimes with formatted drives and sometimes failed drives too)

I have never paid for the software as there are some free software solutions about.

welcome to linuxcnc

So with a new laptop capable of Linux, I started to load everything, first problem was the latency tests, these were coming back at around 10 000 000. Yes 10 million, way too high for LinuxCNC to run. The IT guys did everything to get the laptop to work (I chose a laptop as I wanted the touch screen) but we were unable to get latency under 5 million until we changed a bunch of bios settings and turned off some of the systems in the back end of the laptop. This got us down to under 1 million which was ok for us to get a connection.






With the help of RodW who came out and helped work through a series of my mistakes, we were able to get a machine that moved, it didn't work but it did move. Victory I thought was close. WRONG.

Rod left me with a list of things to get sorted, these were around the limit/home proximity sensors. So I worked away on these and continue to improve the Hal and ini files as I read and learned (lots from Rod and a little from google). I had good movement, accurate travel distance, good speed. I finally was ready to go from linuxCNC to PlasmaC, I realised that I needed another wire to feed the probe sensor(5V) so cut a wire that was running to the proximity sensor(24V) and shorted the board, pooooooffffffff, the MESA 7i96 let out the magic smoke. dead. gone.

As you can imagen, at this point I though about just giving up and throwing it all away, how do I explain to the wife that the board I waited 6 weeks for, I just fried, and now I have to buy another one. Lucky she understands that I make mistakes, but I learn and I love making things.

................ more to come

did you have a real-time kernel installed?

getting jitter like that implies not using the RT kernel

Fast forward a few more weeks and I have been reading lots on this forum, like I must have read hundreds of pages on linux and the different GUI and how to change and edit parts of hal and the reality is I now know just enough to get by, I’m no expert, I’m not even good at it, but I can get by. I have watched every video on you tube that has linux in the title !!!!

With the new MESA board in, new PC, load Debian, load LinuxCNC, test all pin connections on board, full movement control. Good start.
Check output, connect relay, run Plasmac. Great.



Cut. Working. Back to a basic machine, running LinuxCNC (PlamaC), cutting steel.
Then its time to try and work through settings again, lots of reviewing of old photo’s to see if I have screen shots of the settings I had worked out to be best for my setup.

I am still working on these settings and throw trying to setup the THCAD into the mix it making the process a bit longer than it was last time. Rod recommended a few resistors to help reduce the raw arc from the plasma to a point where the THCAD could read it, followed by some creative numbers in the settings have me at a point that I am able to have the THC working. It’s not perfect and I still need to get the settings right, but I’m on the right track.

I know there is lots I have missed and I’ll try and fill some of this in later along with more photos of getting setup when I changed over to Linux.

Cheers

How it currently sits.