Showstopper Plasma Cutter retrofit

rodw wrote:

So here are the remaining issues:
1. Torch Breakaway does not pause motion when triggered despite the plasmac.breakaway pin going true
2. recovery panel is never displayed. I thought it might be linked to not having a M52 P1 but that is not it
3. If paused, it cannot resume until Linuxcnc is restarted
4. Safe height is ignored. Rapid Traverses are at max height

Its a long time sice I have used qtplasmac but these do appear to be bugs to me.
Any help or ideas will be appreciated.
The config is in git here  github.com/rodw-au/showstopper

2.9.3 isn't quite helpful because it's difficult to find the line in the sand and correlate it to a version of QtPlasmaC. Even if you used the buildbot, it's been down for months, so who knows where you stand version wise.

The repo is neat, but it would be more helpful if you could post a backup of the config that was created by QtPlasmaC. It contains a few more "extras" that may help us track down issues that aren't present in the config folder otherwise. First of which is the specific version.

At any rate, I did checkout and build 2.9, and I don't see issues 1-3. Grated, it would be the latest version of QtPlasmaC which is 2.9-238.315, and I also didn't simulate your config ... but from what I see here QtPlasmaC is working.

I don't see issue 4 either, even on the VM, I can see that it's obeying my safe height of 0.75". In the picture below, Max Height is obviously where the cut started from. Remember that safe height is measured from the top of the material up. linuxcnc.org/docs/devel/html/plasma/qtpl...plasma:initial-setup

 


Reading how much you like being on the "bleeding edge", I'm a drop curious why you didn't use the master branch? It does have a few more features that are not present in 2.9. It's also noteworthy to mention that at this point, 2.9 is considered "end of life" from a development standpoint (to include bug fixes).

snowgoer540 wrote:

Reading how much you like being on the "bleeding edge", I'm a drop curious why you didn't use the master branch? It does have a few more features that are not present in 2.9. It's also noteworthy to mention that at this point, 2.9 is considered "end of life" from a development standpoint (to include bug fixes).

Thanks. I actually asked  here which version to use for production and 2.9 was recommended.
forum.linuxcnc.org/plasmac/53044-best-qtplasmac-version-to-use
I also built the 2.9.x ISOs on the Linuxcnc downloads page soi maybe I am biased. For a production setting on a machine 1800 km (over 1000 miles) away for a user, using a production version  made a lot of sense.

Its not that the buildbot is broken but V2.9 is frozen following a release. Release debs for  2.9.3 are in the Linuxcnc repository which can be installed on any linux distro by running the bash script mentioned here 
linuxcnc.org/docs/stable/html/getting-st...th_preempt_rt_kernel
(or by using the ISO)

Checking the release version of QTplasmac in Linuxcnc 2.9.3 , I see it is 2.9-238.314. It seems your last release for 2.9 was not included. It will probably get in there if ever a 2.9.4 is released.

I might write a script to convert from using the Linuxcnc repos to the 2.10 repos at  buildbot2.highlab.com/

Anyway off topic for long enough, The main issue for us is the breakaway. It really makes no sense that it will not work when all the pins are set correctly as inputs into plasmac.comp. I will look at the state of the plasmac.comp output pins to halui as it might not be a qtplasmac issue. All of these features were working years ago so its odd they have broken.
 

tommylight wrote:

Looks awesome, as usual !
The box seems a bit to heavy to be mounted on the gantry, but if he insisted...

Yes, it was how the machine was designed previously and there wasn't really a space it could be mounted elsewhere even if it was a stand alone cabinet. Here it was all packed up for shipping, (Plasma in a box)  The control box weighs  28 kg
 

Full config is attached
 

rodw wrote:

Here it was all packed up for shipping, (Plasma in a box) 

Did you zip it?

tommylight wrote:

rodw wrote:

Here it was all packed up for shipping, (Plasma in a box) 

Did you zip it?

Yes an electric strapping machine zipped it up tight