I was cutting out a tree of life for my wife and I noticed that at times it cuts several cuts in one area and I can see the 18g starting to bow. I run with the water level as full as I can. I’m sure that there is a way to have it pause between cuts or a certain number of cuts and I know that I can hit the spacebar but not real good at getting going again at the correct spot.
I was thinking that if I just had it pause after each cut then I would be able to take care of any tip ups and it would give the steel time to cool. if it stops when the torch shuts off then it would still be splashing water on it until it went to the next cut.
You can edit the gcode directly and add in an M01 command that will stop the program until you hit cycle start again. In your preferences there is a check box on whether to ignore M01 or not, I’ve never used it and came across it trying to help another user I’m sure if you hunt around you can find how tonsue the command properly
I was hoping that there was some way to have mach3 or sheetcam do that for me, so I guess now that I need to learn how and where to edit the gcode, more fun ahead. I also found where to set the distance in sheetcam to not cut close together and that may work for my needs aslo.
I’ll try both and see what works best, the more tools, the more options.
That’s what I’ve been needing, no reason to re invent the wheel, just need to learn how to use the tools that I already have. Can’t wait until next week when I get a chance to try out the new settings that I learned about on this site.
I’ve been manually editing my G-Code on complex files to add in the “Optional Stop” M01 after a torch off is passed M5. I had a pretty complex and large Sugar Skull I was making as a gift for my sister in law’s birthday and had some major issues due to the number and complexity of the cuts. I had warpage, tip up and even ran my plasma to thermal shut down. Believe it or not fixing it is easy with manual editiing.
Download Notepad++ (easier to use) and open up your *.tap files. Do a search for “M5”–add a line under each M5 where you feel appropriate (sometimes I will pass by a count of them, sometimes after every one of them) and Mach3 will pause after each torch off operation, until you hit Start on the console again.
Huge benefits, you can pick out cutout pieces to get them clear of the torch, you can stop for a bit and let the plasma machine cool down, let the sheet cool down, grab a beer whatever. Gives you a ton more control if you’re cutting something that is, or you think will be a big problem to cut.
I don’t have my system yet, so can’t test this, but, according to the Mach 3 documentation, it supports G4 code, which instructs the controller to dwell for a certain amount of time. For example, G4 P5.0 (or G4 P5000, depending on your dwell units) will dwell for 5 seconds. Put this after the critical M5s and you should be able to apply delays as necessary.
Also, I thought I saw somewhere there was a ‘mode’ in which the cutting can be done in sort of a ‘scatter’ mode so that cuts are distributed in time across the whole workpiece, allowing each section to cool before any more cutting is done in the same vicinity. Maybe I imagined this, but it sure seems like a worthwhile thing to have…
UPDATED: Added comment about different dwell units.
