Hello everyone! I found this fantastic forum when researching for answers to plasma questions

[cnckeith]

Hello everyone!
I found this fantastic forum when researching for answers to plasma questions that I had while we were working on developing our new Plasma CNC controller. The wealth of knowledge here is a great asset to all Plasma Machine tool users and designers alike!
Now that our Plasma CNC controller has been released we became an advertiser on Plasma Spider!
I hope you’all find our new CNC controller interesting and I look forward to any questions, feedback and suggestions for future Plasma features to add to our system.
Best regards,
Keith McCulloch
https://www.centroidcnc.com/centroid_di ... oller.html

[adbuch]

Welcome aboard Keith! I like the video. I am familiar with the Centroid Acorn/CNC12 combo as I upgraded one of my Avid CNC tables with your product several years ago. At the time I watched several of your videos to learn how to set it up and operate your software. You were a great help! I presently own the Plasmacam DHC2 tables, but your stuff looks very interesting for a new diy cnc plasma table build. If I decide to build another table, I will give your controllers serious consideration.
David

[Pspider Support]

Welcome Keith! Glad to have Centroid CNC on board

[cnckeith]

New Acorn Plasma CNC video now on YouTube. see the Centroid Acorn DIY CNC Plasma Controller cutting Aluminum. The Centroid Plasma Material Profile Manager includes "book" plasma settings for popular materials and thicknesses. Simply select the material to be cut and run the job.

[adbuch]

Keith - thanks for the video. I use the Centroid Acorn with cnc12 for several of my 3 axis cnc mill/engraver/routers. It works great. For cnc plasma I use the Plasmacam DHC2 with Design Edge software, which includes thc. The smoothing is done in the cad portion of Design Edge. From your video, I take it the Acorn controller does it at the cam level? In any case, I like all that Z travel on the Shop Sabre table - great for cutting into those I beam shapes.
David

[cnckeith]

Keith - thanks for the video. I use the Centroid Acorn with cnc12 for several of my 3 axis cnc mill/engraver/routers. It works great. For cnc plasma I use the Plasmacam DHC2 with Design Edge software, which includes thc. The smoothing is done in the cad portion of Design Edge. From your video, I take it the Acorn controller does it at the cam level? In any case, I like all that Z travel on the Shop Sabre table - great for cutting into those I beam shapes.
David

David,
Hello!
Yep our Plasma smoothing will look ahead at all the CAD/CAM generated vectors and do a "best fit" curve thru all of them. This smooths out ratty saw tooth short vector g code which is commonly generated by CAD/CAM systems especially on art work type Plasma projects. This is done at the G code job processing level! Smoothing preprocesses the Plasma G code file for smooth motion. Its interesting to note that the best fit curve can be controlled by the user so the smoothing algorithm can be modified to suit the machine and the g code for the best possible result. There are also two "stock" smoothing profiles which work for 99% of users so its an easy one button set it and forget it feature. I'll post more info on how it works in my next post.

[adbuch]

Keith - this is how the Plasmacam Design Edge Smooth Tool works.
David

[cnckeith]

cool. Drawing smoothing is definitely an important step in file preparation and everyone working with scans and art files will need to use those tools at some point for sure! As its always best to have clean drawing/art to start with and then have the cad/cam system put out clean g-code but for cases where either of those can't be done for whatever reason, Centroid motion smoothing to the rescue.
Not only will Centroid smoothing produce nice results with less then ideal g code...it can improve even decent g-code by smoothing table motion (eliminates violent movements, jerky motion etc) which results in nice kerf, clean edges and low dross. So it is very useful either way.
The example below shows a pretty decent CAD drawing with a nice arc going into a straight line, but the CAM system is outputting really short 'ratty' vectors for the actual torch path to approximate the CAD drawing geometry.

Here is an excerpt from a plasma smoothing white paper i am writing.

[Joe Jones]

Hello everyone!
I found this fantastic forum when researching for answers to plasma questions that I had while we were working on developing our new Plasma CNC controller.

This is completely AWESOME! This is the very first system I have seen that presents a serious challenge to the PlasmaCam system. I like the additional flexibility! Although the screen is populated with a lot of DATA that is generally "eye candy" it does seem like this is a REAL consideration for people who are still looking for a plasma cutting system. Some of the features mentioned in the video are neat. If I did not already have the Samson 510 table and the Full Monty of DesignEdge software, I would give this system serious consideration.

As it stands, I am still very comfortable with DesignEdge for drawing, and I am moving toward the laser platform. There will always be a place for plasma cutting, but lasers are coming down in price and UP in quality and features, so ...

Still, this is a VERY impressive system!

Joe