ShopSabre Sidekick 10 Acorn Retrofit

[ShawnM]

Today I started the retrofit of my ShopSabre Sidekick 10 plasma cutter. This was purchased used from a tool auction and it needed a little work to get running. It came from ShopSabre with a WinCNC plasma controller with THC. It has a Hypertherm 85 plasma cutter, laser pointer for setting X0Y0, upgraded break-away torch head and the vibrating/engraving pen for part marking. It's fitted with Clearpath servos and has rapids of 1000 ipm between moves.

The control cabinet as you see it in the pics is how it came from ShopSabre, not very professional considering what this machine costs new.

At the end of the day today the control cabinet was gutted of the WinCNC stuff and tomorrow the Acorn plasma with THC goes in.

I did love the WinCNC material library in that it stored all the cutting parameters for each material and was excited to see that Centroid has the very same setup. Saves a lot of time when you want to cut the same design from various materials or thicknesses. Excited to try this out.

Here's a link to my Google photos that will show my progress. Hopefully Keith will be ready to remote in via TeamViewer when I'm done and get the software setup and make some sparks.

ShopSabre pics:

[cnckeith]

thanks for posting. looking forward to working with you. -k

[ShawnM]

Well I got everything wired up today and Keith help me run through the torch calibration setup and it cut perfect the very first time we ran the torch calibration test. We did a few subsequent straight line cuts and all went very well with very nice cuts. I have to adjust my torch break away tension as I had issues with the break away tripping during a few of the torch touch off tests. We slowed down the touch off procedure and that helped a lot but I still have some tweaking to do on the break away adjustment. It has two proximity switches and it trips rather easy. Keith suggested making one a float switch and the other the break away trigger so I'm researching that now.

I added some pics to the album of the test cuts and a video of the modified cncm.hom script because the torch actually homes outside the water table. Now after it homes it moves the torch inside the table and resets my G53 and I have the soft limits set for the full 5x10 travel.

ShopSabre didn't even have the Clearpath motors setup properly and after adjusting some parameters and dialing in the motor steps/rev I had to actually lower the max rate of travel and lower the fast jog speed because it actually scared me it moved so fast.

Machine is dialed in and runs very smooth and it's fast. The cuts were perfect with no dross other than the pierce hole. Love the profile manager for material and cut parameters. Keith explained some of the "under the hood" algorithms and how they will help improve plasma cuts and how the smoothing will also help improve the cuts.

Very excited to start testing this thing out next week and I'll report back how everything is working.

A big thanks to Keith, Chris and Centroid for all they do.

[cnckeith]

thanks Shawn! great working with you, looking forward to the final tweaks on the machine and more test cutting.

[ShawnM]

Here's an issue I'm having, cutting a simple part that is two seperate cuts. A small hole then a square around it. File is attached.

The machine (double) touches off and cuts the small 3/8" hole, then it moves to the perimeter to cut the square and the machine assumes that it has already touched off and start the Z axis up and away from the material at the slow jog rate of 10 ipm. The weird thing is I cut 4 parts with no issue and then the other 8 had this same problem.

Even when I tried the VCP button for Torch Touch Off it would back away from the material at the slow jog rate. In the Alt-I screen it showed the tip touching when it wasn't. There was no message in the message window.

Report attached and the file in TXT format, I had to rename it from .tap

The last two photos in this album is the part I'm cutting.

[ShawnM]

I just went back to the machine and did 6 "torch touch off's" from the VCP button in 6 different areas on the material and all worked as expected.

Follow up: Then I cut two more parts with no issue.

[Joey]

Hi Shawn, Joey here. Thats a sweet setup you have there! Thanks for uploading photos. That helps a lot and its fun to see other machines.
I've seen this issue before when the consumables have been shorted inside the torch head. I've usually found it to be water inside the consumables. Sometimes turning the torch on manually will clear the issue or taking the torch head apart and re assembling will clear the issue. If the message screen indicated that the torch is already touching then most likely the torch head is grounded inside. The torch shield is making contact with the inner nozzle.

[ShawnM]

Hi Shawn, Joey here. Thats a sweet setup you have there! Thanks for uploading photos. That helps a lot and its fun to see other machines.
I've seen this issue before when the consumables have been shorted inside the torch head. I've usually found it to be water inside the consumables. Sometimes turning the torch on manually will clear the issue or taking the torch head apart and re assembling will clear the issue. If the message screen indicated that the torch is already touching then most likely the torch head is grounded inside. The torch shield is making contact with the inner nozzle.

Thanks Joey, I love the machine and I love it even more now with the Acorn Plasma controller. The old WinCNC was clunky in my opinion.

Your response makes sense because when I went back to the machine about 15 minutes later it was fine. I'll try to manually fire the torch and burn it off next time it happens.

Keith mentioned that the double tap touch off "was an artifact from testing at this point" and could be edited out in the macro. Will the double tap be the norm or will the next beta go back to a single tap? I guess the only drawback is the time it takes, for those running a full production shop and need to churn out parts really fast, it'll add a little time to cutting.

[cnckeith]

next beta is single touch for the torch touch off.

[Allin1Chris]

Hi Shawn,

I have attached a modified Touch off macro that will only touch off once, additionally added an error message in the case the tip is already "tripped" before performing the touch off. To Install place the file in your C:\cncm\system folder and overwrite the file. Can test the touch off with the Torch Touch Off VCP button. As Keith already mentioned, this same macro should appear in the future versions of the software.