Hi all
I just got a crossfire pro I’m new to cnc trying to wrap my head around how they work!
What sets the parameters for table size
Is it in the programming or do the motor drivers Count steps how dose it work?
Is it possible that when running a program that it could lose its place and be out of step?
Thanks for helping the new Guy! 
Welcome to the forum. The cut shapes are designed in a CAD program (Fusion, AutoCAD, etc), The CAD drawing then needs to be post processed (in Fusion or by additional software) to produce an instruction-set (Gcode) for the plasma table motors and relays to understand how to move. The control software (Firecontrol, Mach3, etc) reads the Gcode and outputs the number of steps to the motor drivers, the motors then rotate those precise number of steps, and relays energize when so instructed to fire the torch, etc. The motors are sized big enough to rotate under the load of moving the gantry, torch, etc so as to not lose steps. Steps will only be lost if something really jams-up and prevents the motor from turning. That’s as simple as I can explain it. Hope this helps some.
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Mark,
From what i can gather so far (my table has not arrived) the table has no sense of self on the crossfire or pro. Meaning that it doesn’t know where it is in relation to it’s own boundaries. It only knows where the zero point that you last set is. So it’s critical to set your home or zero when starting a job. If you do not it will crash if you try to exceed the designed work area. you can easily avoid this by running the torch to the 4 corners of your desired cut in firecontrol to make sure you are inside the envelope. I’m sure others will correct anything I got wrong here.
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So if your design is bigger than the table you will crash. it has no way to know if the table is 3’ or 4’ long?
Controlfire only knows where you set zero.
If you set zero somewhere that will end up running off the table limits, it will crash.
No limit switches for the Crossfire Pro… yet
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Yes if your design is to big you will crash. Again easily avoidable (easy to say at least 
) by running the torch manually to the 4 corners of the cut.
That’s good to know!
Could you add limit switch’s to the table?
You can physically do it but fire control wouldn’t deal with it in a meaningful way on the pro.
It’s the add-on kit that a lot of pro owners were or are hoping for one day
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It wouldn’t really help to keep you from ruining metal. It would just stop the machine from crashing.
Adding limit switches without having the software know the work area of the table, isn’t going prevent you from loading a program that goes outside the limits of the table. It will just stop the machine from crashing after it has already cut part of the program.
It’s not hard to design things that will fit on the table and then zero your torch in a place where it won’t run outside the table limits. Once you load a program, you can visually see the cut lines on the screen and jog the torch around to the extremes of your design to make sure it fits on the metal.
In affinity design I made a simple 20-inch diameter circle, and in fire control it runs off the table limits, I have to stop it so it won’t crash. what am I doing wrong?
How did you process the file to convert from Affinity to something you could input into Firecontrol?
Did you set your zeros and choose point of origin in fire control?
There are a lot of unknowns here, so lets start with some basics. After you made your circle in Affinity, what did you use to create a toolpath and post process into G code? Fusion or Sheetcam?
Assuming that you created the G-code properly, where are you setting your zero on the material?
Your origin point in the program that you created the G-code should have been in the lower left corner of the drawing. Picture a square/rectangle around the perimeter of your design and the lower left corner should be the “origin”.
After you load your program into Firecontrol, you have to jog the torch to the point where you want that lower left corner “origin” to be on the metal. Then hit the “Zero all axis” button in Firecontrol. That tells Firecontrol that you want that spot to be origin. You can then jog the torch around the metal and confirm that it will fit by looking at the torch position on the screen.
Also, in the lower right of the visualizer screen you will see the size of your drawing in inches. If that doesn’t match what you wanted, something went wrong in your CAM setup.
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something went wrong in Affinity the size is not correct, I am using the lower left corner to zero all and using sheet can for the G code.
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It could be a scaling issue when you import the drawing in Sheetcam. Affinity may be saving as millimeters by default. If you import as inches into Sheetcam, it will be much larger than you intended.
You can measure in sheet cam to make sure you are right. Then when you create the operation go to the report shows size, pierces and time all helpful in pricing work out.
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