Power went out

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jpmreno
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Power went out

Post by jpmreno »

Is anybody out there an ace with Mach3? The power went out at the shop right in the middle of a plasma cut. What to do? Help!!!!
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sawdust1
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Re: Power went out

Post by sawdust1 »

I know nothing about Mach 3. If you have not moved the steel.... Having had a similar but different problem I turned the plasma cutter right off. I restarted the file and the travel from home, When it got to the place with the problem I paused the table, turned the cutter back on when I hit resume the torch fired for the next cut and it continued until finished.

Best of luck.
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Re: Power went out

Post by Dugan »

In sheet cam reverse your cut direction and start from the initial cut, it will enter from what would have been your lead out backwards.
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djreiswig
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Re: Power went out

Post by djreiswig »

Won't that cut the wrong direction with the torch and make a rough cut?
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steel 35
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Re: Power went out

Post by steel 35 »

You can guess where you started it @ 0 and run your program again with the tourch off, stopping it in several places and eyeball,if 0 needs moved one direction or the other before turning the torch back on at the last area that was cut. It can be started very close, if you have not and do not move the piece. Now you can wait for an ace :oops:
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Re: Power went out

Post by motoguy »

If your machine has homing switches, that makes things pretty easy. You can home the table, go back to the MO5 prior to the cut loss, and start from there.

If you do not have homing switches, you need to make sure you're Gantry as Square, via whatever method you normally use. Then, try to find a 90-degree corner you have cut somewhere on the design. Going to sheetcam, and zoom in as far as you can on that particular Corner. Put your cursor right in the center of the corner, and look at your ex and your y locations in the lower right-hand portion. These are your coordinates for this corner on this particular cut.

Now start up your table, and go on put your torch on that exact spot on the actual cut material. Keep in mind the offset you were using during the cut. You want to ignore the kerf width, and put the center of the torch on the actual point used for the drawing. This will be the inside of the line if you're using an outside cut path, or the outside of the line if you're using an inside cut path.

Keeping the torch there, you can go into Mock, and enter the X & Y numbers exactly as they show in sheetcam. In theory, your machine now knows exactly where this piece of material is lying on the table, and should be able to continue cutting without losing location.

You may have to go back to the beginning of the cut, start the cut without the torch on, and then activate the cut once you get to the fresh metal.

Even though I have a laser on my machine, I keep one of these on hand, for exactly this reason:

https://www.kmwfabrication.com/product- ... hine-torch
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Re: Power went out

Post by motoguy »

Most important thing when this kind of situation happens, is do not move the material. As long as the material is in the exact same spot, you can pick the cut back up. If you move the material, or even rotate it, you're likely screwed.
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Re: Power went out

Post by motoguy »

You can still "home" the machine, but "define" the location by entering the actual coordinates into Mach. If I use the machine zero, and run to x10 y10, I can then go into my X and Y DRO on Mach/CommandCNC, and change each of them to 20. What used to be X10 Y10 based on the machine home, is now X20 Y20 to Mach. Using this, you can essentially define any point on a cut. It's easiest to do if the material has not moved. However, if the material has moved, you can still do it...you just have to ensure the material is exactly square (relative to it's original orientation) prior to defining the new point.
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Re: Power went out

Post by motoguy »

And save your files prior to cutting. You never know when you'll need to pull them back up. In Sheetcam, be sure to save the JOB file, not just the output file (.ncg for Linux, .tap for Mach).
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