I am trying to Peck using the drill tool on a Pro Plasma.
A change in pierce delay in SheetCam does change the G-code correctly, but actual pierce time does NOT change from about .5 seconds.
I can change the Pierce delay override in FireControl but does not make a difference in actual pierce time. I have changed the Pierce delay up to 200% then clear down to 10% and no noticeable difference in actual pierce time. It seems to stay right around .5 Sec, no matter what I do. In SheetCam I set it to .150 sec and it still stays at .5 sec… I actually set the Pierce time in SheetCam to 0, G-Code reflected the 0 sec but pierce time stays at about .5 sec.
The plunge rate is probably your biggest problem. That should be 50-70 IPM. The time it takes to move from pierce height to cut height is added to the pierce delay time.
That helped a bunch. It now fires a short burst on the first hole then the rest of the holes you hear it “click” to try to fire on all the following holes, but doesn’t fire. It is set to 250ms now and is too long as it makes a hole, but seems too short for the next holes. Hmmmm
Firecontrol does this weird thing, where it makes the first pierce longer than the rest. You may need to program a hole somewhere off the part for the first pierce, so you can set the delay correctly for the rest of them
I was dealing with decimals of seconds for Pierce Delay for a while then I went into options and found where sheetcam can use Milliseconds instead of using Inches for the Units of Measure.
As soon as I changed the Unit of Measure to Milliseconds, it auto-converted the Seconds values in that field to Milliseconds, which I prefer to use, unless it causes issues.
I checked the G-code and it puts the Seconds equivelant of MS into G-code.
Since .5 Sec = 500ms, etc., all I think should be good.
Here is a pic of the G-code where I had the setting at 250ms in SC.
I reviewed a ton of posts about Pecking and most seem to indicate a short Pierce Delay of around 150ms (.15 seconds)
Let me know if I’m missing what you’re saying.
Thank you
I do understand what you are trying to do. And setting to MS would make sense. But the trouble with it is most plasma cutters can not fire the torch that fast. There is a lot of delay between the time the plasma cutter gets the single, relays activate, air valve opens, air gets to the torch head, torch plunger activates and starts the pilot arc. Then you need to also add in the THC time if you are using it.
This is why most large CNC manufactures us high frequency not blow back systems as it faster and more reliable.
the pro’s relay has an inherent delay of about .3-.5 secs so in reality you’ll need to factor that into the pierce delay.
i have my drill/centerpunch toolset set to around .7 PD and it works every time, just adding a peck mark to the material. sometimes i add a little more delay if i want to have an actual hole made.
We have been successful in pecking at about 315ms, just working on consistency of the pecks. I see on other posts that consistency to duplicate all pecks are an ongoing issue.
Thanks for your assistance to get over the major issue we had.
