Feature Request: Jog to Point
…i.e. jog the machine to a specific point on the bed (as it appears on-screen) and/or your design. We use this a LOT to often see where physical material is with respect to design - or just to move things into more convenient locations.
Welcome to the forum!
Not sure if you have XR, as it has more potential for that request since the limit switched are integrated and it has the autosquaring feature.
I am trying to understand how your option is different from the current situation.
After you do that, anywhere you move the torch, you will see it track in the visualizer as well as the torch to the metal on the table.
Thanks for the reply – I think we have an XR.
There are two big reasons we want this:
One is just for general head movement - like we bring the head to the opposite side of the table to do most work and consumables changes. It’s a pain to hold the arrow key/button the whole way down.
The other is to fit designs to metal. If we have an odd-sides piece with some cuts in it already - we want to move the head to various places on the design to see if it will miss this cutout, or if this point would go off the end of the piece, etc.
So it’s easiest to be able to check the art by physically moving to different places WRT the artwork. Many machines have a simple mechanism where you can right-click a point in the bed and say “move to here”.
Another useful feature would be something like a “move work relative to” - for example - so I could move the torch head to a very specific point on the bed - and then click to say “I want the torch to be HERE relative to the file”. Like - if my origin was lower-left on the file, but I wanted to align it to the top right of my workpiece.
Thanks for your consideration.
On your last point, you can change the origin on your drawing by using the “set program origin” function in Firecontrol.
Click on that button and 5 green boxes will appear on the corners and center of your design. Select one if those boxes and that is now your origin.
You can enter negative or positive values in the x,y and z that is if you know how much you want it to move them hit return to zero
The feature already exists kinda.
edit: just be sure to enter opposite positive or negative of where you want it to go
I was thinking so after the cut it can park the torch in a specific area for the post flow/water splashing…. Like over a piece of plate to block the splash.
If you use sheetcam ,you can set park where you want after final cut .
How about just an MDI command line? It would allow for position commands, and a lot more.
Here is a 44 second video to illustrate how, when and where we use this all the time (on another machine)
You can accomplish the same thing by setting the work zero at the appropriate location (with the right work origin selected) then jog the head to the interference point and see where the crosshairs are in Fire Control.
OK. So you could currently just type 2.379" into some box and hit enter and the machine moves there? Because that’s what he’s asking for, not some workaround where you reset work zero or offset in 1/16" increments or whatever random number the arrow key moves you to.
You can enter that as a negative then hit return to zero and it will
And then you have to change your zero position back to zero, which is why it’s a workaround and not a function. If it was you could make multiple moves wherever you want and hit return to zero to return to the original 0,0.
I agree it’s better than nothing his original post sounded like consumable changing. Then you can re-home.
Consumables change can happen anywhere, I’m thinking more like work offsets or using it for alignment and things like that.
That’s the point - you don’t know where the correct home location should be at this point. you may have to iterate on this a few times if things aren’t initially correct - and you may have to do it for multiple reference points.
So many machines have this feature to help - and many (lasers) even have cameras for this exact problem - it’s so common.
I do agree again. The op used this as one of two reasons for wanting it. Read his second post… just helping him not to have to hold the arrow key. That is until and if the feature is available…
Not arguing out of the feature just helping.
When I’m trying to shoe horn a cut into a skelton/scrap piece I’ll use the remote to jog to the area on the skelton, alt+w sets the work home, then use the remote to move to the interference point and look at the screen to see if the cross hair is in or out of the cut. If there’s another interference point I jog to it and see. Assuming it fits, I press ALT+R and the cut file starts to run. Tab on the remote alternates between 1/16" and continuous jog. If it doesn’t fit, I go to the next place, alt+w, and start the loop again.
I already have to be near the table to see where the torch is in relation to the skeleton. I don’t see a meaningful advantage to clicking a line and seeing where the torch is vs my method.
An alignment laser would make it easier for seeing where the torch is. A camera could do the same.
I have a 20’ cable to connect the laptop to the control box on the table. My plan for making working with it nicer is to put a decent sized TV on the wall to mirror the laptop’s screen so I can see Fire Control while walking around the table/shop.
Pretty much how it works for me as well right now when it comes to checking to see if a part fits a particular piece of drop.