Had a new one this afternoon. Hopefully someone has seen / fixed it before.
Cutting (4) 3/8" fixtures from mild steel (10.5" x 9.5" with a handful of feature inside.) Due to the size of the material, I was limited to cutting 2 at a time. 1st fixture, no issues. 2nd fixture, after cutting all the interior features, halfway around the outside perimeter (Y axis travel only) I see / hear a stutter. Don’t think much about it at that time. When it finished the Y axis cut and returned on X, it was 1" shy of where it should have been! (Cut right into a bolt hole and lost arc.)
Any attempts to return to work home were met with the Y stepper refusing to move and a message that the move would exceed limits. Machine Y in the DRO was showing 40 something! I disabled soft limits and was able to traverse freely, however now my work zero was gone. (Hmmff!) Based on the successful 1st cut, I was able to get “close” to zero and resume. (Mind you, I’ve yet to find a way to get Firecontrol to continue a cut from a point halfway thru a line. I rewrite the G-code, but there must be a simpler way.)
Exited Firecontrol, powered off the machine, and rebooted. Loaded the 2nd nest. Was able to home and zero with no issues. Started the cut, and wouldn’t you know, outside profile on Y axis it stutters again. Stopped the cut and found the same issues. Y axis refusing to move. Machine position exceeding the size of the table. Proceeded as I did on the 1st difficulties, and completed the cut. 2nd part of the 2nd nest cut with no issues.
I think you know that FireControl could be told to start at the beginning of the line. But, you would like to pick the “middle.” I think you are right on that point: FireControl won’t do that for you. That would be nice to just point to the part on the drawing and say “Burn this spot right here.”
There are Gremlins in that code with the limit switches. If you do a dry run, does the same thing happen? If it does, I would try un-installing FireControl and re-install. Perhaps some file got corrupted.
Of course you have probably seen my love/hate relationship with limit switches?!
At the time of the error, I still had the “questionable” upgrade available to take my firmware from 1.3ls to 1.2ls. I did allow the machine to update, restarted, and was presented with the update back to 1.3ls. Again, I let it update, and restarted.
Loaded another cut file, this time 1/2", and ran a dry run. No issues. Cut it. No issues.
Was it a bug in the firmware? Unknown. But everything seems back to normal at this time.
I know! That is the exact same thing I have described to others on two other occasions. You are the first to confirm that they had to go through all of those same sequences before things straightened out.
As I have said, I believe they had no way to get all of the “old” v1.3 off customers’ computers so they did this reverse update to v1.2 and then to the new v1.3. Maybe sometime, someone will admit what was going on. Glad to hear you are up and running again.
Take those limit switches off and put them in the back of a deep drawer. They are more trouble than they are worth. The only reason I would ever think they would be viable, is indexing a giant sign.
I know some guys like them but a large portions of this forum is limit switch nightmares. I have run my Crossfire pro for years now without crashing it into the stops.
Again this is just my two cents
I know he just loves them… Brownfox is a trained professional at plasma. That’s no joke. I see the whole point of them but it seems like the software patch to make them work has a bug.
My first guess in what’s happening to you is you got some blowback on a rail and it’s jamming the Y axis. When cutting 1/4 inch or more it’s a real hazard and you have to watch out for it. Check the rails for smoothness. The limit switch throwing alarms is just a byproduct of the lost steps from the jam.
I think I must have dodged whatever firmware update caused the issues. I know I updated, then didn’t cut for a while. When I did, I got the torch firing error and found this thread to re-update to 1.3.
