Voltage Scale and Auto Volts

Rigtho, so I can clearly see the torch rising and at the same time the voltage falling instead of increasing. This got me stumped.

Can it be that I have to switch the Z-axis scale ?

Do you access to a DVM with memory?
Also can you do a hal scope of the encoder velocity and set it to trigger when the velocity drops?
This has all the makings of a bad contact on the plasma cutter or THCAD.

Hi Tommy,

I will have a go with HAL Scope. The plasma cutter is only a couple of months old, I like to think that should be alright. And don't forget, this thing cuts no worries on 12 and 16mm plate, with the THC working (and working fast too, pretty amazing to see). But as soon I get to 25mm the thing plays up.

Another thing I just noticed : I am cutting test pieces, rectangular 250x25mm with 5mm corner radii. Sometimes when it comes out of a corner the torch lifts up, and then sometimes it doesn't. Can velocity anti dive or void anti-dive interfere in any way ? I am just clutching straws here.

Cheers, Peter

Hi all,

Just out of curiosity I have set the encoder scale to -1 : setp encoder.0.position-scale -1 to see what happens. Reasoning that the voltage should increase instead of decrease when the torch lifts up. I am no expert on HAL, but I assumed that's how I could reverse the voltage scale. It didn't make any difference though. I can clearly see the torch lifting up substantially before there is a drop in the voltage, and it gets worse from there.

Hi all,

I will let it rest till after New Year. Just cut 1.6mm at 45A, 6000mm/min and the THC works fabulously. I got a spare THCAD-10 here which I will use when I get to it, there is something in the voltage reading on the thick material that is bugging me.

Thanks for all your help and suggestions again, I know this is all a work of love and understand the time and effort that goes into a piece of software like this. Much appreciated !

Cheers, Peter

The plasmac component uses the absolute value so changing the sign will have no effect.

 There is a hal pin name plasmac.target-volts that may be worth watching, that shows the voltage that THC is trying to maintain.