[xalky]

I think I fried the thc module, when I attempted to use the internal voltage divider on the longevity. I should have ordered my system over the phone. When I ordered it online. I thought I ordered the rav01, but being a cnc noob, when it didn't come in the box, I followed the instructions for using the cnc connections and screwed it up. Tom at CandCNC took pitty on me and is sending me a new moddule and a Rav01. After pouring thru that manual at least 3 times now, I would say that I'm not such a noob anymore.
While I'm waiting for parts to come in ,I'm gonna spend some time shielding and grounding.


Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk 2

[xalky]

I had a hell of a time getting serial ports working on 3 Different computers. For me, I found that loading the smartKut drivers was the only way to get mach3 talking to my serial ports. Once I got it working on one pc I tried it on the others and all the serial ports came live in each pc using the SmartKut driver. Hell if I know why.

Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk 2

[xalky]

I'm still waiting on my replacement parts from CandCNC but in the meantime I'm shielding and grounding everything I can think of. I just scored some Scotch 24 tinned copper shielding tape off Ebay 1"x1000'..yes one thousand feet, for $75. I'll be shielding and grounding everything in sight :0.

[Teknition]

I think I fried the thc module, when I attempted to use the internal voltage divider on the longevity. I should have ordered my system over the phone. When I ordered it online. I thought I ordered the rav01, but being a cnc noob, when it didn't come in the box, I followed the instructions for using the cnc connections and screwed it up. Tom at CandCNC took pitty on me and is sending me a new moddule and a Rav01.

Thats one of the reasons I ordered my kit from CandCNC, outstanding support for their products even when it isnt their fault.

Brad

[johndjmix]

Definatly a lot to learn with the candcnc, which makes you wonder...it would take 500 times the amount of time to learn if you didnt have candcnc!!!

--John

[xalky]

Definatly a lot to learn with the candcnc, which makes you wonder...it would take 500 times the amount of time to learn if you didnt have candcnc!!!

--John

Exactly. Some guys that are building cnc tables have that electronics background but don't necessarily have the mechanical background, for them it might make sense to order parts and build thier own, but even then, CandCNC have integrated the THC modules and communications into Mach3 which is something that would personally take me an eternity to do. We absolutely made the right decision in going with CandCNC...no doubt. :cheers:

It took me about a total of 60 hrs to build the mechanicals for my table from scratch, That includes designing it on the fly, mostly. I doubt the electronics guys could do that. But If I had to build all the electronics from parts and make it all work with the software you can easily add a year to that.

[xalky]

I've been grounding and shielding everything I can think of. Still having a problem. I've figured out that controller doesn't trip when my motor cables are disconnected. This leads me to believe that I'm getting some HF distortions coming into the controller thru the motor leads. All the motor leads are shielded and grounded right before they enter into the controller.

I'm at a loss as to why this is happening. Either my shielding isn't heavy enough or the motors need to be shielded. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I see no way to ground isolate the gantry from the motors. The table is grounded to a seperate ground rod. The shielding is grounded over by the PC ground rod. The 2 ground rods are roughly 20ft apart. I tried grounding the shielding to the table ground rod and that seemed to make it worse. I think I will try that again though since I extended my motor cables so that I could move the controller away from the table.

Thanks

[johndjmix]

Interesting. I have zero interference problems and I haven't grounded anything. Sometimes too much grounding causes a problem (ground loops). Possibly try disconnecting all the grounds and try it out to see?

--John

[xalky]

Interesting. I have zero interference problems and I haven't grounded anything. Sometimes too much grounding causes a problem (ground loops). Possibly try disconnecting all the grounds and try it out to see?

--John

Oh....I did that the first time and fried my power supply on my PC. I'm making progress though, I'm running seperate grounds to all the motors and trying them out one at a time by plugging them in one by one and firing the torch and so far it looks like I got it. I'm not sure what kind of space your table is in, but mine is in a 2 car garage and theres metal everywhere. My steel rack is literally 18" away on one side. I've got a metal garage door 12" away on the other side. And the garage is just chock full of machines and and tool boxes...all metal. So theres a lot of HF bouncing around in here. Interestingly enough, I have 2 PCs in here and they're fine now, but it wasn't pretty the first time...

It was so bad that I thought about scrapping the whole thing, I honestly didn't think I would be able to overcome this in hte space I had to work in. My garage is 22x22, thats it. :tired:

[Teknition]

Look thru the new bladerunner manuals. There is a section in there on grounding (sorry, i dont remember which of the 3 sections its in). I do remember that the pc and the bladerunner control box should be grounded thru the outlet, not via ground rod. The table, the gantry, and the plasma chassis should be all grounded thru the ground rod. Also, wire shielding should only be attached on one end.

Brad

[xalky]

Look thru the new bladerunner manuals. There is a section in there on grounding (sorry, i dont remember which of the 3 sections its in). I do remember that the pc and the bladerunner control box should be grounded thru the outlet, not via ground rod. The table, the gantry, and the plasma chassis should be all grounded thru the ground rod. Also, wire shielding should only be attached on one end.

Brad

Yes... Thanks for that. I'm actually looking at it right now. I hadn't gotten that far in the manual yet. It's on page 76 of the 3rd manual, which is the THC section. This should be helpful.

I'm going back to my hand torch, rather than the cheap machine torch because ,for some reason, its not triggering a power fault. I have a separate ground rod over by my PC that I was using to ground the PC cabinet and the cable shielding coming from the table. The shielding has no continuity to the table so it's totally isolated.

This whole grounding and shielding thing has turned out to be the biggest obstacle to getting this running. This has been a challenge to say the least. I know it's because of my cheap Chinese machine with it's noisy HF start.

Thanks for helping me out, I might send you a PM if I run into more problems.

[ajclay]

Interesting. I have zero interference problems and I haven't grounded anything. Sometimes too much grounding causes a problem (ground loops). Possibly try disconnecting all the grounds and try it out to see?

--John

I learned that the hard way... My motor wire shields and encoder wire shields I had connected on both ends. It becomes an antenna when both ends of shield is connected.

Worked on it for about a week before someone mentioned it.

Reading about grounding... I've got my cpu on it's own ground rod. Not common to the shop, building, and most important... other equipment. My plasma is in a metal building with only metal material in close proximity.

aj

[xalky]

I really like your build! I would like to do that but I needed a plasma table quick and I bought one from EZcut. Yours looks great, nice work!

Well thanks for the compliment. That's a very nice table you bought. What size did you get and how much did that set you back? Just curious as, I'm wondering if all the time I've put into mine has been worth it.

[johndjmix]

xalky, a few things here ive noticed with mine.

Hook up a toggle switch that breaks the torch on/off lead and one to short the arc-ok wires. This will allow you to do "dry runs" without the torch being on. I always do this before i cut to make sure material is lined up.

Also, i had messed somthing up and my DTHC was not working. Couldnt figure it out....then i clicked on the cut profile button in mach3 and selected a profile...bam it was working. I must have set somthing wrong somewhere. So i ALWAYS select a cut profile to be sure.

Now, if you hook up the switch to the torch on/off and arc-ok you can tell if the dthc is working without ever firing the torch. Just do a dry run...you will notice that the torch goes down, does a touch and go, then comes down as it would be piercing, then it moves up a bunch. Ive noticed that if the DTHC isnt on it doesnt do the move up a bunch part. This is how i know the DTHC is online and ready to go. HUDGE difference in cut quality with the DTHC working. Since i got it working my arc-ok problem seems to have gone away.

Also, make a txt file on your computer and take notes of all of your settings...EVERYTHING! Then email or save it somewhere so you never have to do this all again. Of course you should backup mach3 and everything.....but this way, if you have a drive crash, and all else fails you know your numbers to punch in.

Its a lot of work getting everything setup right, but once done trust me, you will be happy with the results.

--John

[xalky]

John, That's great info and I will do what you've suggested with the toggle. On the arc OK, would a toggle work or should I use a momentary push button instead?

If a toggle would work, I could probably do the whole thing with one 2 pole toggle with no/nc capability on each pole. I just had a thought that these 2 items might have to happen in succession in which case the one switch idea wouldn't work.

As far as the configurations go, I've already lost them a couple of times, but I haven't really gotten to actually running the a file yet. The farthest I've gotten is manually jogging and punching in some g code for singular table moves. I definitely plan on backing the settings up. I think I have a usb harddrive that I can dedicate to the shop. I'll bet a thumb drive would be plenty of storage for those small files, How big can they be?

I had to send in the front panel on my bladerunner system for a replacement. I'm waiting on that. Tom seems to think that's why I've been getting all these power fault shutdowns.

It's too bad we aint neighbors, I'd love to swap your front panel board into my system to know for sure.

[xalky]

This thing is outside now. It's grounded to the point of ridiculousness
and I'm still getting power faults. If the motors are disconnected there are no
faults. I have a detached garage with a 100 amp sub panel that the plasma is
connected to and I plugged the controls and computer into the basement panel
outlet which is 100 ft away phsically and electrically to avoid line noise and
I'm still getting faults. It's getting into the bladerunner via the motor wires
and there seems to be no way to eliminate it. I've tried shielding the wires,
not shielding the wires, of course when they are shielded they are only grounded
on one end. I tried grounding the wires to the plasma table ground from that end
or grounding them to a seperate ground rod over by the controls. I even
lengthened the motor cables by 15' to move the electronics as far as practicable.
It's coming thru the motors and unless there's a way to isolate the motors
better I'm pretty much done. If I knew a hypertherm would solve my problem for
sure I'd buy one in a heartbeat, but i don't have the cash to spend $3500 on an
experiment. Jim Colt are you there?

[mcv300]

I had same problem, it was solved by testing each ground connection with a continuity/beep multimeter

somewhere in your system , there must be "short circuit " ground connection, it could be - for example - grounding point of your bob board to plasma ground

I had "short circuit" from work clamp to pc ground

[BTA PLASMA]

The problem may be that your way too close to that tip with your PC and everything else. We have successfully integrated the chinese plasma cutters into CandCNC packages as well as a Gecko 540 system only to find out later they were unreliable. They will work for a while...maybe a long while but you will eventually be let down. If you are frying parallel ports or serial ports your getting a grounding issue most likely from your PC cabinet. To make these hi-frequency systems work you need major sheilding. You need to sheild your wires and tie your sheilding into the body of the motor then to a star ground on the table. You need to ground every part of the Z axis and moving isolated components to the star ground. You need to ground the sheetmetal of the plasma cutter to a seperate ground in the ground and then run everything else to a ground in the ground far away from the plasma cutter body in ground....ground. Even then you can get issues running the cheap chinese unsheilded lead anywhere near your wires. The noise will transfer to any electrical part. Many have tried and out of frusteration sold their chi-com unit in favor of a better suited plasma cutter. You have taken it this far with your mechanics and eletronics only to cheap out on the actual cutting tool. My advice is ditch the problematic cutter and get one that wont make you pull your hair out today or even a year from now.

We have a chicom unit fire in our shop and 30 feet away behing a brick wall the monitors kick off. We have had the most hi-freq units from thermaldyne integrated and not do this.

[xalky]

I had same problem, it was solved by testing each ground connection with a continuity/beep multimeter

somewhere in your system , there must be "short circuit " ground connection, it could be - for example - grounding point of your bob board to plasma ground

I had "short circuit" from work clamp to pc ground

I've done all of that many many times. The work clamp can be coiled up on the floor 10' away from any controller connections, pc completely disconnected from the controller and turned off and plasma torch in my hand 10' away and it'll set off the power fault on the bladerunner when the motors are plugged in. It's my noisy plasma which is a multipurpose tig/plasma/stick, and i think the HF start scheme is noisier than it would be on a straight Longevity plasma machine.

[xalky]

The problem may be that your way too close to that tip with your PC and everything else. We have successfully integrated the chinese plasma cutters into CandCNC packages as well as a Gecko 540 system only to find out later they were unreliable. They will work for a while...maybe a long while but you will eventually be let down. If you are frying parallel ports or serial ports your getting a grounding issue most likely from your PC cabinet. To make these hi-frequency systems work you need major sheilding. You need to sheild your wires and tie your sheilding into the body of the motor then to a star ground on the table. You need to ground every part of the Z axis and moving isolated components to the star ground. You need to ground the sheetmetal of the plasma cutter to a seperate ground in the ground and then run everything else to a ground in the ground far away from the plasma cutter body in ground....ground. Even then you can get issues running the cheap chinese unsheilded lead anywhere near your wires. The noise will transfer to any electrical part. Many have tried and out of frusteration sold their chi-com unit in favor of a better suited plasma cutter. You have taken it this far with your mechanics and eletronics only to cheap out on the actual cutting tool. My advice is ditch the problematic cutter and get one that wont make you pull your hair out today or even a year from now.

We have a chicom unit fire in our shop and 30 feet away behing a brick wall the monitors kick off. We have had the most hi-freq units from thermaldyne integrated and not do this.

I did it backwards and bought the plasma cutter first and after I got it I decided to make a plasma table for it.

Coincidentally my computers one for controller and one for general computing, which are in very close proximity (10' away) function just fine but they are properly grounded. Tom mentioned a scheme to change the grounding setup inside the bladerunner so that it won't fault at all but I'm not comfortable doing that for warranty reasons.

And as you said, there's the reliability issues with these cheapos. I know that Tom designed these things to work flawlessly with a hypertherm. At this point I'm balls deep into this project and I'm not stopping till it's done. Would I love to get my china plasma to work with this? absolutely. But not at the expense of frying all my electronics. I just want it to work...period.