Feature Request: ramp piercing (aka moving piercing)

Should be easy, says the one that has not dealt with external offsets since they came out!
Use external offsets ONLY during piercing to move the torch in small circles while lowering the torch.
Something like:
-start torch
-wait for arc ok
-if the feature is active, inside the time set as pierce delay:
--use offsets to make small circles, i see no reason this being adjustable, two settings should do, 1 or 2mm, 3mm might be needed for thick materials but i think it is to much
--lower the torch for the amount set, must be between material 0 and pierce height, can be 1mm from material to pierce height to avoid torch touching material and messing the nozzle
-disable feature/offsets and move to cut height
-proceed as usual
-
I would not do just lowering the torch, the nozzle will suffer from the melted metal spraying up, i have seen this, did not like it. Moving in a circle the melted stream will always fly sideways as that will be the path of least resistance/material.

We did look at wiggle piercing a long time ago but were put off by comments from Jim Colt that indicated it was detrimental to consumable life due to the excessive shower of molten material. I am not 100% sure if this related to ramp piercing as well though. I am also not sure that ramp piercing on a HP plasma could be related to an air plasma either.

In the end we went with pierce only mode which gives users the opportunity to do the initial pierce with end of life consumables and then switch to good consumables for the final Cut.

We could look at this again but we would probably need some input from folk experienced at cutting thick materials.

rodw wrote:

My take twas that it ramped in during the leadin, not circular motion.

 

That will never pierce through thick material as it will consistently have to pierce the same amount of material.
-
It is called wiggle piercing, it literally does small circles, as can be seen:

And it is built in in SheetCAM.

rodw wrote:

@Phil can you confirm the THC still functions with

#<keep-z-motion> = 1 

From memory it does.

I have never used it, the only person I know that used it was thefabricator03 and I don't recall him mentioning that as an issue.