Centroid Community CNC Support Forum

Our next project is a plasma table. Do you have PLC software for Plasma control?
Mainly looking for Z height control. It would have to read an A/D input and adjust Z accordingly.
Hoping to see voltage settings in CNC11 also.

Theoretically the building blocks are there.

I don't know if anyone has made it work well yet. You should anticipate an extensive trial and error period.

See the PLC system variables SV_MPG_n_OFFSET_MODE, SV_MPG_n_PLC_MPG_MODE, and SV_MPG_n_OFFSET.

If I recall correctly, there was some unintuitive behavior when the MPG offset mode was turned off. The control would want to move to cancel the offset amount, rather than staying put until commanded to go somewhere else. Therefore you had to ramp the offset back to zero once at a safe clearance height (somewhere where the resultant movement would neither crash the tool nor exceed the Z+ travel limit). However, that was several years ago. The feature may be better defined now.

We don't have a basic plasma PLC program as of this time. However I know it has been done for one off custom jobs using a custom PLC program and the ADD4AD4AD board (4 Analog I/O). Scott is out for the day but he should able to elaborate further.