- Grbl controller for linux upgrade#
- Grbl controller for linux full#
- Grbl controller for linux software#
I will want my machine to be able to cut at least one inch preferably more and the one I have now won't do that. I do lots of welding on the side and its usually heavy duty structural work like 30' automatic gates and the spans above them, my regular job I work in a chemical plant. He said it would cut one inch easy and that it came with a torch for a plasma table. A friend of mine has an Esab he would sale cheap that he bought about 10 years ago and has never used it. I am completely open to purchasing a new machine which, I have to do some more research on that, too I guess. So, the plasma cutter that I have now is pretty old, and I've only ever used it by hand.
I do not know the answer to any of your 3 questions, but I'm guessing the answer to all of them is, no. If you let me know what plasma cutter you have, I might be able to make some other suggestions. I have no experience with other platforms/hardware but a number of people have commented on how much of an improvement the Mesa card makes with stepper based machines when they convert from another motion control method. Eg the noise has to change the signal by 12 volts before anything is affected.
The other major advantage is that while the logic and stepgens run on 5 volt, all I/O uses 24 volt power which is much more immune to being affected by noise. The Mesa cards can run the stepgens up to 10 Mhz, way faster than you have time to create discrete steps! This substantially relaxes the latency requirements of the PC's operating system.
Grbl controller for linux software#
Motion control is still managed on the PC by Linuxcnc but the stepgens are offloaded from software to the Mesa hardware. It 5 stepgens, an encoder input used by the THCAD and some inputs and some 2 amp relays onboard for outputs.
I'd probably call it an industrial quality ethernet interface board. I would not call a Mesa card a BOB as that implies it can connect to a parallel port. I'm not sure if you can use Hypersensing/ohmic sensing with the exposed tip like that though. The wattage of the resistor does not matter 0.25W to 0.5 W is fine. So just to be clear the cutting volts will be around 130 volts max and the THCAD is rated for 500 volts indefinitely so by using around 200 volts gives a better resolution and we will never care about volts > 192 as we will never need to monitor it that high! The voltage coming outside of the plasma cutter will carry non lethal voltage and current using that method. So put a 910k resistor on wires connected to each electrode inside the plasma cutter and place the THCAD-10 inside your control panel.
Grbl controller for linux full#
Thats 950k per side but the closest is a 910k resistor which if you work backwards will give a full scale of 192 volts. Its best to split that on both electrodes. This requires a (200-10)/100 = 1.9 M scaling resistance. I think I would shoot for around a 200 volt full scale with a Mesa THCAD-10. That way you are upgrading to a tightly integrated plasma controller. If you can afford to, also throw out any parallel port BOBS in use and replace with Mesa hardware.
Grbl controller for linux upgrade#
So in answer to your question, the best upgrade you can do is to toss out your Proma THC and buy a THCAD. LinuxCNC becomes a full plasma aware motion controller. With a THCAD in conjunction with Linuxcnc, the concept of a THC becomes obsolete. This allows the motion controller to manage the plasma cutting process.ĥ. The THCAD provides a nice, neat, accurate and robust method of telling the linuxcnc motion controller what the torch voltage is. We are learning what they already know and applying it to Linuxcnc.Ĥ. Its just that companies like Hypertherm have a bit of a head start in this area. If the Linuxcnc motion controller knows the torch voltage, it can control the torch height like the very best high end controllers costing AUD $40k. They don't need external THC's becasue they can do it all themselves.ģ. The very best plasma controllers (like the AUD $40k Hypertherm system thefabricator03 mentioned ) manage torch height control internally so they can get superior results and full integration between voltage sensing and all seeing all knowing CNC motion controller. But its not possible to get full control over the process as its hard for the two systems to communicate in real time (1000 times a second).Ģ. The traditional THC's like Proma exist becasue few CNC controllers can manage torch height control internally so must depend on external hardware. I think its important to understand a few things here:ġ.