I have never had a piece of equipment defeat me like this one has done today…
Detail of cut not transferring to back of material(see pic). I am not looking for perfection but I thought This machine could make a cleaner cut on the reverse side.
My settings: 70 ipm, 45amps, .5pdt. Air is regulated by the xp45 with no warnings indicated. I have tried every combo of speed and pierce delay with very little variation in cut quality. I messed with lowering the torch to work distance with no real change. I thought adjusting the torch angle might help, it did not. I feel like the arcs losses its sharpness quickly before it reaches the other side of the plate. I am just lost.
I was wondering if any of you have been down this road, any help would be appreciated, thank you.
Can you post the code? I would like to see what cut height and what springback and backlash values you are using. It’s likely that your torch is much higher than .060" when cutting.
If you don’t wish to post the code, I suggest that you set the cut height at .040" and the springback at zero.
I totally agree with @ds690. I recently had major issues with terrible slopes on my cuts, worse than yours. I have the Hypertherm 45XP as well and had been getting good cuts even with 1/4 inch but around February of this year, it all went to pot.
If you want to check your torch height, here is a file from @Phillipw that allows you to run this gcode thru the IHS and without turning on the torch, stops at the “expected” torch height of 0.060 inches. cut height test.tap (224 Bytes).
I cut 3/16 at 85 imp with my Hypertherm powermax XP 45, cuts come off clean and dross free. You are over heating material due to slow cut speed. The Hypertherm book setting for 3/16 steel is 85 min for best quality cut. My cut height is .060 snug with feeler gauge when I check It periodically throughout the week.
Ok I made the changes, spring back set to zero and cut height set at .04
It made very little difference in the part but my voltage from my testing yesterday was at 137 volts To 123 volts with the changes you suggested. Book says 128 volts but does not give a range of acceptable voltage. do you know what live voltage you usually see?
I don’t know for sure what my voltage was. You can turn off smart voltage and put in 128 for nominal voltage.
If you want to reduce the taper in the corners, you have to slow down for sharp corners. The plasma stream trails behind the Torch, so the bottom won’t accurately follow the Torch when it changes direction quickly.
What CAM program are you using? In Sheetcam, you can turn on “overcut inside corners” and that will cut a small loop inside the corner to make tab and slot assemblies work better.
I am using fusion 360. Yeah fusion has that loop to create a corner function, i couldn’t get to work with my drawing, it would not cut the whole part out but i can give it another try. I can try and slow it down And see what happens.
Fusion 360 has the ability to slow for small details. Enable Feed Optimization under the Passes tab. I’ve found setting the reduced feed rate to 50% of my standard cut works well.
I just tried that optimization feature and there was a slight improvement on the inside corners but when it slowed down, the plasma plume would slightly graze the part. It might mean there is another issue.
I ran another part and just paused the program, my torch to work distance is easily .090
That is with spring back set to zero and cut height set at .04. What would be overriding my inputs? What am I missing?
