Anybody else find the new update of fire control loses zero after thc stops a program? Here’s what happened to me multiple times…
Cutting a piece and the drop out fell thru before the end of the cut. Thc stopped the cut and said run from here. I said sure. When the new program is created the machine loses its zero. Spent about 2 hours trying to save a chunk of 1/4" steel and gave up.
Here are some things I dont like about firecontrol:
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I wish there was a way to run the programs with the z axis turned off so I could manually let the machine run the original program. I could then rezero and let the program run after manually lining up the machine. I was able to save alot of pieces using mach 3 this way. Sometimes with the plasma cutter unplugged.
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Let the user start a cut in the middle of a cut even if it doesnt trigger the torch. It’s next to impossible to get back to say line 9945 if I had to.
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Enable manual torch firing. That option goes away as soon as a program is loaded. That way if I had a half cut I could know it’s coming up a d hit the manual fire and again try to save a piece.
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The new scale and rotate options are fantastic. But I am unable to scale and rotate. It seems like it’s one or the other.
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When the run from here option pops up using the thc (assuming zero isn’t lost) it works great. But it would be nice if what was already cut would remain in the view window. Even if it was a different color. If I could see what was already cut following a THC stop event. I could have found zero manually and continued cutting rather than scraping the piece.
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Post past versions of the firecontrol updates so I can go back. The losing zero was enough for me. I scrapped a $70 chunk of metal yesterday because the machine kept going ape shit and I had no way to get it back to the start point.
To be honest I prefer mach 3 to the fire control. And mach 3 sucks.
Hi Jason-
Sorry you are having issues with FireControl. We are continually working to improve it as well as the entire system and as such we are trying to replicate this lost zero issue. We haven’t been able to yet but we are hoping you could provide some more details as to how it happened.
The easiest way to take a look at what happened would be to provide the FireControl log file. We log specific actions just for situations like this. If you could email your FireControl log file to support@langmuirsystems.com or to us in a DM on this forum it would help us immensely.
You can find this log file in C:/Users/[YOUR USER]/.FireControl/firecontrol.log
We are actively working on most of the features you mentioned and hope to have them available soon. An XY Dry Run, starting cuts at given G-Code lines, improvements to scale and rotate, etc.
Older versions of the software are still available if people ask but we’d rather they not confuse new customers. 20.2 can be downloaded at the follow link and likewise for 20.1, etc:
assets.langmuirsystems.com/firecontrol/older/FireControl-20.2.msi
Again, we are truly sorry for these issues and would appreciate anything you can provide to help us fix it!
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Im having similar issues. If you stop a running program then hit go to my xy zero it just takes off to a random spot. Also if you stop a straight cut operation mid cut it does a similar thing but locks up firecontrol and you have to power cycle the machine to get it to come back on and respond to commands. Also noticed strange behavior with the IHC and wiggle pierce maneuvers.
Just unistalled and reinstalled v20.3 and it got worse. Loaded my .tap file and firecontrol locked up and wouldnt respond to mouse clicks. Going to reinstall 20.2 and see if the issue is still there to rule out a hardware problem
We’re going to do our best to replicate this first thing tomorrow morning and get a fix going ASAP.
was there ever a solution found for this? I have had similar problems with losing zero. After reloading the g code and starting the program from where it left off (using run from here) after issues with IHS not functioning. After 4 or 5 restarts, it just randomly changed the origin or zero to the last point it was parked at. Would be nice to get through one complex cut job without issues.