Not exactly sure how to title my question. But wondering how I can reposition my project in Fire Control so I can orient it to how it will best lay out on the material I’m cutting from?
So far with smaller projects on my CF Pro it hasn’t been much an issue. But I have an item that will be oval shaped and about 4 or 5 feet long coming up here soon so I’m wondering if I can reposition it in Fire Control or if I need to position it in 360 exactly how it needs to cut on the CRpro?
On a side question… perhaps this should be a seperate thread… if the project I have is 5 ft long, my CF has a cutting range of approximately 48x33", where do I create the break in the piece so we cut the first 33" or so, then slide the sheetmetal down and make the remaining cuts? Is this something I need to set up in Fire Control or in Fusion before creating the G code?
For positioning of parts, you can use the “rotate” function in Firecontrol. Click on the rotate button, put in the number of degrees to rotate the part and hit rotate. The part will move that number of degrees every time you hit the rotate button. After you rotate the part to where you want it, you will have to hit the set program origin button and select the new origin point by clicking on the green box in whatever corner you want the origin.
For indexing of cuts, you need to split your drawing into 2 drawings in whatever design program you use. Make sure you know the distance of the first program and mark a reference point on the sheet that corresponds to a point on the table. I clamp 2 123 blocks to the lower rail on the Y axis and align the sheet with those. Then I measure from one block to the distance of my first program and mark that on the sheet. Run the first program and slide the sheet down to the mark and run the second program without changing the Zero point.
So I used that rotate feature and that was very helpful! Thanks!
When cutting my project which is text just a couple inches tall I had several areas where it lost the arc but I was simply able to just follow the on screen instructions and it started that loop again and it worked fine. I actually found too that i could start again from a specific point in the line of code so i did this on the next occasions it lost arc. However I ended up with one part where I restarted it a few times and it kept losing arc at same point. When I tried to start at the last line of code I didn’t realize that it missed nearly half of the letter. I just let it continue cutting and figured I’d just come back to it afterwards and find the code line and begin from there to finish the segment it missed… but I couldn’t find that line of code. Of the coding displayed at bottom of the screen in FC I could only access a small part of the intire project.
I left the material on the table hoping I could get some tips on how to finish this part of the burn.
I don’t believe it’s a mechanical issue… I believe it’s an owner/operator learning curve! Lol!
Air pressure stays at 75 psi. I clamp the ground right to the material.
I’m certain the reason it loses arc is because the text is small and the font I used several of the letters run together. The text is not straight… but rather follows a wave path. I had several letters such as an “O” where I created tabs to hold the center of the letter. Again this is all very small… letters are only a couple inches tall. I’m certain it’s just pushed the limits of what I could do with this. I’ve only made a few things on it so far. This piece is 4ft wide so I didn’t want to scrap it to start over…
I was just hoping to access the code where it had the hick-up and see if I could mess it up even more… I mean finish the part it missed
If you want to cut the area that you missed, hit the finish button and it should reload the whole program. Then you can click on the part of the drawing that you need to cut again and it will go to that line. You should be able to hit “run from line” at that point. It will generate a new program from that point to the end, so you’ll have to stop it after it cuts the part you need.
As for losing the arc, that can happen in small features where the torch has to pass over a previously cut area.
I believe when you restart from loop in fire control it rewrites the code from m that point losing the code already cut. If you click go to my zero and reload original file and rotate it again. You may be able to recover from there. But then again I could be incorrect. If that outside cut is complete and clamp is out side of that cut you may not get a good ground. Easy way to tell if code is gone is look at the fir control screen if only part of the file is show in picture then I think code for the stuff not show is gone. If the part that you need to recreate is still shown you should be able to click on the line and start from there
Seems like everyone on this thread understands cut from loop and cut from line but to clarify for future readers “Cut From Loop” starts the cut at the pierce before the line segment you click on while “Cut From Line” starts at that line.
It appears there was some other glitch because part of the screen was showing text that was already cut. So when selecting code to start from it would only go to that part shown as having not been cut. Anything else was for code was gone as you described.
Since you rotated the part, you will have to hit the little circle with an arrow to regenerate the whole program and then rotate it and select the origin again. As long as you don’t change your zero point, it should work. Once the whole program is on the screen, you will be able to click on the part you need cut and go from there.
Yes I was able to dial it back in. And yes I had lost the “zero” point so I had to pick a point on the piece to zero it out to. There must be an easier way than what I’m doing… but I got it pretty darn close and let it do some brief dry runs to make sure it seemed to be aligned… But yes it worked out very well!
I wished I’d had made larger tabs for holding the inner pieces of letters because a couple of them just got so tight that I burned them off. Oh well… part of the learning curve. Small letters aren’t the easiest to do.
But I’m still super stoked that this worked! Thanks to you all for the pointers!!!
Great explanations in this thread by @ds690. Thank you. @TinWhisperer made a good point about the air pressure. That happened to me when the air pressure was too low: my Hypertherm 45xp or rather fire control shut off the torch. My air was set at 100 and dropped to 90 psi during the cut. And, apparently that was not sufficient.