Beginner Plasmac Questions

AgentWD40 wrote:

Does the " Manual Single Cut " use THC?

It would, provided you had THC enabled and it reached the velocity of the currently selected material

Also, the manual for my machine specifies Edge Start rather than piercing after a certain thickness. To accomplish this I assume I'm going to have to Disable ArcOk, right?

M63 P1 or M65 P1 (disable Ignore Arc OK)

Yes, unless you can precisely align the edge of the material under the torch

Finally, if I disable ArcOk per above, will it ever automatically be reenabled? Like when I load a new gcode, reset the machine, or maybe after each cut?

If you disable it in G-Code then you should re-enable it at the end of the G-Code. Loading new G-Code would reset it if you had that in your preamble. Resetting the machine will re-enable it.
The other option would be to use the checkbutton on the GUI, you could check it prior to a cut requiring it then uncheck it when you don't require it.

Also, the manual for my machine specifies Edge Start rather than piercing after a certain thickness. To accomplish this I assume I'm going to have to Disable ArcOk, right?

If it is only at the edge, a work around is to put a bit of dummy metal at the edge and start the cut there.

snowgoer540 wrote:

Clive wrote:

Also, the manual for my machine specifies Edge Start rather than piercing after a certain thickness. To accomplish this I assume I'm going to have to Disable ArcOk, right?

If it is only at the edge, a work around is to put a bit of dummy metal at the edge and start the cut there.

I suppose you could also re-enable it during a cut. For example, say you were cutting a 12" line in X:

M62 P1 (turn arc ok off)
M3 command
G1 X0.125 (or whatever distance you're sure you're into material)
M65 P1 (turn arc ok back on)
G1 X12
M5

I've not tested that exact scenario personally, but I would think because you are cutting at a set height, and thick material isnt as bendy usually as sheetmetal, if you checked auto volts it would just start controlling the THC as usual, and control based on the height you had set at the beginning of the cut.

That should work fine. Probably better to use M63 instead of M65 as there is motion after so you can be sure when the re-enable will happen.

If we've used Pierce Only mode to pre-pierce a thick sheet would we need to disable Arc OK when we come back around to do the cuts?

I think it would make sense to add a postprocessor variable in sheetcam "Use Edge Start". This would appear in the sheetcam tool settings for each material.

If this setting was enabled, you could generate code on the start of the job to turn off the arcOK and reenable it at the end of the job. If you wanted to use ArcOK again, you would need to create a seperate sheetcam layer and a define a new tool that did not "Use Edge Start".

This does not need any changes to Plasmac, just a tweak to the Sheetcam Post processor.