I have a CNC plasma table. It comprises a Hypertherm 45 cutter, X,Y, and Z drives connected to a (Russian!) break out board that is driven by Ethernet Cat5 cable from a Compac PC running Mach. The drives, power supplies, break out board are in an industrial cabinet.
It’s all worked well for several years except that occasionally it goes a bit mad. It can maybe loose it’s Z position, or one axis will be misplaced.This tends to be after repeating cutting several identical parts. I’d thought perhaps overheating but in practice I don’t think it’s that, as if I get Mach to reload the file it will work again.
So I’m thinking maybe something is being corrupted in the PC. Very occasionally I’ll have to reload Mach it self, but usually not, just the part file.
Now Plasma cutting is inherently electrically noisy so I am plastering ferrite clip on chokes everywhere that I can. So all cables into and out of the PC are now so equipped and I’m doing the same to the cabinet containing the drivers etc but what about the source of the noise - the plasma cutter itself? I’ve done the control cable and arc voltage cable but what will be the effect if I do the torch cable. Will suppressing the torch cable interfere with establishing an arc?
Since I slapped the ferrite cores elsewhere I’ve had no fails but it’s only a couple of days and incidents of falling were rare so maybe too early to tell?
It’s all worked well for several years except that occasionally it goes a bit mad. It can maybe loose it’s Z position, or one axis will be misplaced.This tends to be after repeating cutting several identical parts. I’d thought perhaps overheating but in practice I don’t think it’s that, as if I get Mach to reload the file it will work again.
So I’m thinking maybe something is being corrupted in the PC. Very occasionally I’ll have to reload Mach it self, but usually not, just the part file.
Now Plasma cutting is inherently electrically noisy so I am plastering ferrite clip on chokes everywhere that I can. So all cables into and out of the PC are now so equipped and I’m doing the same to the cabinet containing the drivers etc but what about the source of the noise - the plasma cutter itself? I’ve done the control cable and arc voltage cable but what will be the effect if I do the torch cable. Will suppressing the torch cable interfere with establishing an arc?
Since I slapped the ferrite cores elsewhere I’ve had no fails but it’s only a couple of days and incidents of falling were rare so maybe too early to tell?