Crossfire Pro with THC
Hypertherm 45XP
Cutting sign in 26 ga galvanized sheet. Fusion 360 setup per Hypertherm and the Langmuir guides. The program starts and cuts the first item, stops cutting, moves to the next position, touches the table, moves up to cut height and stops. If I close the warning box and start the program it cuts the letter, then repeats to the next. So I’m able to manually move through the program but obviously this isn’t correct.
I have the ground clamped to the sheet. The program works fine in test mode.
Thoughts? This was my first project from scratch so take it easy on me!
It’s not really an error, just a dialog that says the torch failed to fire, here are some possible reasons. And none of the given possibilities are at issue.
Not if it doesn’t say why. It fires and cuts just fine if I manually hit start each time it stops. The question is why is it firing just fine when I hit start, yet not doing it on its own. Something in the way the program’s G-code was written, or in the THC, the main box or in the Hypertherm’s settings (per the manual for this ga power was set to 30V.
Manufacturer’s recommendations from the cut chart are a good starting point, but sometimes need to be modified in practice using trial-and-error to get the best results. Thin sheets like 26 gauge usually need a very short pierce delay just to make sure that the arc transfers through the metal and that the arc can be maintained. Keep in mind that 26 gauge is the very thinnest that the Powermax 45 XP is rated to cut, and any time you’re cutting at the cut capacity limits (either thick or thin) you’ve really got to do some fine-tuning to get things going smoothy.
If you have pierce delay set to 0s, then unfortunately you will not be able to use the pierce delay real-time override option in FireControl as it works off of a percentage of the pierce delay that is set in CAM. Any percentage increase or decrease of 0s will remain 0s. Try post processing a new G-code, this time set a pierce delay of 0.1s. Once you have a pierce delay set, you can start fine-tuning it using the real-time overrides settings in FireControl.
Great info. I did try manual override so it’s nice to better understand how things work. I also redesigned my project to increase gaps but for some reason 360 keeps ignoring one part of the DXF file exported from Illustrator, which it didn’t do before. Anomalies seem part of this game. Guess I need to head to an Autodesk forum.
I had the same issue with the 45xp also ,. I found a thread that said the hypertherm post flow keeps the torch from firing on the second cut. For the 25’ machine torch there is a .4 second delay after the controller sends the signal to fire to the time the torch fires. I added .4 to hypertherms chart time to create the gcode in fusion. Then manually edit the first pierce in the gcode to the table specs. Haven’t had any issues since.
I changed the delay to .4, no go. But at 120%, which is essentially 0.5, it worked!
So now, should I assume that delay applies to all thicknesses of metal? Shouldn’t this be very prominently posted where so every Hypertherm owner sees it?
I added .4 to what everhypertherms manual says. Which changes by guage. So if manual say .1 I set it at .5 if .3 I would set at .7. The .4 is what works for my 25’ lead. I haven’t played with it much as it seams to work. I did cut some single line cuts on 20 Guage ss. I wanted the pierce hole as small as possible so I set pierce delay at 75% got pretty good results. But I think I had thc turned off.
