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What to do with old plasma table

Talon2006 said:
Change the first two too..
Linux and Ethernet cable and you will have a very nice machine.
Click to expand...
You're way too late, dude. This monstrosity is already going back together with MyPlasm in the box.
 
patooyee said:
To set the ppr on my drivers, is it just 360/motor step angle? (So a motor with step angle of 1.8 degrees would be 200 pulses per rotation?)

How do you determine step angle of an unknown motor?
Click to expand...
Just throw in whatever number you think it is and you can use a calculator to work backwards from how far it moves when commanded x".
 
Due to my poor math skills I had to calibrate all my axis',
I knew the step count but not the pitch/pulley diameter so I just used online calculators to correct the parameter based on measured distance moved vs commanded.

www.learnyourcnc.com

CNC Calculators — Learn Your CNC

www.learnyourcnc.com www.learnyourcnc.com
 
Good timing. I have a 16 year old Dynatorch with servos that are $1400 ish each motor. Used on ebay not from China are roughly $5-600. Lost a Z axis brass nut last week cutting an hour file, it dropped and bound on the follower, motor was full grunt, the whole program crashed (antiquated, no disc to reload, company out of business, scared for the day this comes) , estop and other methods don't stop the grunt, shut off power supply to controller. It had bottomed, crash detection has been broke for a bit, wire around:homer:, broke barrel and end of $700 Hypertherm 85 machine torch, burned up motor (and maybe driver?). I like how smart the smart motors are. I've hesitant to go steppers, but now that I'm not doing this every day for a living, I don't feel like I can keep throwing down big money every time a motor dies.

So I have a functioning 5x10 with Nema 23 1/4" motors x 3 (Long Axis is X on mine), X has a slave drive pushed by one motor with gearbox. I could ditch the slave shaft and hang another stepper to run on the rack on the slave side. I'd love it if nothing ever changed and I didn't have to learn something new :laughing: That said I might be in a corner here. Reading the whole thread I like how Avid looks at first glance, I'm willing to spend a couple grand, the cut job that it crashed on was $1000 of cutting and drawing. This whole thread has been devoted to how to do it for a few hundred to have components that can be replaced for pennies if there's a problem. I've had this thing since 2007 and had it in full production all day every day from 2013-2020. I've replaced 2 motors and one power supply. If I can get HALF that reliability with a ready made solution that you can replace parts on (can I one at a time replace shit in the avid?) and has a non proprietary software, I'll suffer the learning curve and get something coming.

On a positive note, I was able to find parts for my torch, got it all apart and it is sub $100 to fix from what I can tell. Def need crash detection hooked up to prevent more fuckery.
 
On mach 3/4, can you have a home 0,0 and a cut file 0,0? My table currently always knows where it is at all time and if I tell it to go home or to service position, or to 0,0, it will rapid there. So on steppers, if I just set a piece up by my work area away from the home position and zero the corner of the plate, is all that Mach knows is that this now zero and has no idea it is a few feet from the far X stop? Mine currently has no limit switches, just hard stops that it seeks out with pressure and then knows where it can't go outside of every time you boot.
Mainly, If you are jogging at 100 IPM and hit a limit switch (assuming it doesn't know where teh boundaries are), does it just his the fucking brakes and try to go to zero right now?
 
Blacksheep10 said:
On mach 3/4, can you have a home 0,0 and a cut file 0,0? My table currently always knows where it is at all time and if I tell it to go home or to service position, or to 0,0, it will rapid there. So on steppers, if I just set a piece up by my work area away from the home position and zero the corner of the plate, is all that Mach knows is that this now zero and has no idea it is a few feet from the far X stop? Mine currently has no limit switches, just hard stops that it seeks out with pressure and then knows where it can't go outside of every time you boot.
Mainly, If you are jogging at 100 IPM and hit a limit switch (assuming it doesn't know where teh boundaries are), does it just his the fucking brakes and try to go to zero right now?
Click to expand...
On linuxcnc there doesn't need to be limits just home switches, you then setup "soft limits" based on table travels.
Adding limits would be really easy though if you wanted that ability.


I do what you are doing set all drawings to 0,0 and rest 0,0 to the place on the sheet with room to cut it.
I would like to get to "jobs" in sheet cam where you load the material size on the table and that size material is in the sheetcam file then as you cut parts out of the sheet the new part is positioned exactly where it fits on the sheet.

I may not ever need that feature doing what I am doing now but if I re-build this table to a 4' wide sheet table that would be a nice thing to have to be able maximise material use.
 
Blacksheep10 said:
Good timing. I have a 16 year old Dynatorch with servos that are $1400 ish each motor. Used on ebay not from China are roughly $5-600. Lost a Z axis brass nut last week cutting an hour file, it dropped and bound on the follower, motor was full grunt, the whole program crashed (antiquated, no disc to reload, company out of business, scared for the day this comes) , estop and other methods don't stop the grunt, shut off power supply to controller. It had bottomed, crash detection has been broke for a bit, wire around:homer:, broke barrel and end of $700 Hypertherm 85 machine torch, burned up motor (and maybe driver?). I like how smart the smart motors are. I've hesitant to go steppers, but now that I'm not doing this every day for a living, I don't feel like I can keep throwing down big money every time a motor dies.

So I have a functioning 5x10 with Nema 23 1/4" motors x 3 (Long Axis is X on mine), X has a slave drive pushed by one motor with gearbox. I could ditch the slave shaft and hang another stepper to run on the rack on the slave side. I'd love it if nothing ever changed and I didn't have to learn something new :laughing: That said I might be in a corner here. Reading the whole thread I like how Avid looks at first glance, I'm willing to spend a couple grand, the cut job that it crashed on was $1000 of cutting and drawing. This whole thread has been devoted to how to do it for a few hundred to have components that can be replaced for pennies if there's a problem. I've had this thing since 2007 and had it in full production all day every day from 2013-2020. I've replaced 2 motors and one power supply. If I can get HALF that reliability with a ready made solution that you can replace parts on (can I one at a time replace shit in the avid?) and has a non proprietary software, I'll suffer the learning curve and get something coming.

On a positive note, I was able to find parts for my torch, got it all apart and it is sub $100 to fix from what I can tell. Def need crash detection hooked up to prevent more fuckery.
Click to expand...
Clearpath servos are awesome and likely cheaper than your china motor price.
 
CarterKraft said:
Clearpath servos are awesome and likely cheaper than your china motor price.
Click to expand...
I'll start looking, but I'd need a software that would command servo drivers right? I'm fully ignorant of how the magic in the box works, but it surely isn't as easy as buying a solution made for steppers and insert servo drivers in place of stepper drivers and motors. Especially smart motors that always know where they are, the software needs to be written to use all that info right?
 
Blacksheep10 said:
I'll start looking, but I'd need a software that would command servo drivers right? I'm fully ignorant of how the magic in the box works, but it surely isn't as easy as buying a solution made for steppers and insert servo drivers in place of stepper drivers and motors. Especially smart motors that always know where they are, the software needs to be written to use all that info right?
Click to expand...
Yes and no, encoder based controller is possible with the higher end controls LinuxCNC etc. but a servo drive will work the same as step/direction stepper drive if you set it up that way.

Basically the sky is the limit here....
Just like with Patooyee, post up a thread with what you have, what you want to do and any red lines you have and I'll try to help if I can.

I am far from a expert, you've been warned :emb:
 
CarterKraft said:
On linuxcnc there doesn't need to be limits just home switches, you then setup "soft limits" based on table travels.
Adding limits would be really easy though if you wanted that ability.


I do what you are doing set all drawings to 0,0 and rest 0,0 to the place on the sheet with room to cut it.
I would like to get to "jobs" in sheet cam where you load the material size on the table and that size material is in the sheetcam file then as you cut parts out of the sheet the new part is positioned exactly where it fits on the sheet.

I may not ever need that feature doing what I am doing now but if I re-build this table to a 4' wide sheet table that would be a nice thing to have to be able maximise material use.
Click to expand...

Not having limit switches and relying on your soft limits works well untill you have something happen that loses steps… and you launch the gantry off of the table.

Ask me how I know :p

Limit switches are cheep!!!!
 
Talon2006 said:
Not having limit switches and relying on your soft limits works well untill you have something happen that loses steps… and you launch the gantry off of the table.

Ask me how I know :p

Limit switches are cheep!!!!
Click to expand...
I am supposed to be running closed loop just haven't got that working yet :homer:
 
CarterKraft said:
Any updates?
Click to expand...
I spent a bunch of time a few months ago tramming and truing the rack and pinions and started installing the new y-axis motors. An adjustment in one place throws stuff out at another place. Can't say I'm impressed with the motion still, but it's 100x better than it ever was before, so I'm going to give it a shot before I give up on it. Then I found a new job and all my parts have been sitting there ever since. I'm just now getting to the point where I have time and money to do things with my life again. I plan to get back on this in the next couple months after I catch up with all the crap that I fell behind on while I was unemployed. Unfortunately, I have less free time than before with the new job. It's a good job though, so you do what ya gotta do for the family and screw everything else.
 
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