Having some issues with my Plasma cutter misfiring and messing up my pieces (cheap plasma). Is there an easy way to step through the gcode and have Mach3 re-cut in the spots it missed? The only thing I could think of was to turn the plasma off and run the program, and then pause it right before where it missed a cut, and then turn the torch on and let the program keep running?
Is there an easier way to go it? I have a couple of large projects coming up where the client is providing the material, so I don't want to mess up any of the cuts! When I get the material myself, I just cut the messed up piece over and deal with the scrap, but I can't do that with material from the client?
We have had the same problem with that plasma line. Sometimes the signal is sent and it never fires or it fires during rapid travel moves. The chinese plasmas have power supply issues and can take some time to energize. They are for the most part a bad choice for CNC cutting.
You can go back to "Run from here" or type in the line in the check box above the G-code in Mach 3 then hit the "Run from here". Mach may need you to click zero Z as it may accumulate the Z moves due to the way the plasma post is using G91. So find the line you want to cut, click run from here, click start and the program will work its way to that line, hit zero Z and then hit run and it should do its job.
Are you still using the import plasma? There are some new ones from Hypertherm like the Powermax 105 that looks pretty powerful. I dont know if you are still having trouble but we shelved the import plasmas a little while ago never to try them again. The switches inside werent working correctly and we had sporadic missing of pierces. On our CNC plasma tables the electronics will tell the plasma to turn on. From there its the plasma's job to fire and with these units the contact doesnt seem to cause them to fire 100% of the time. The import plasma cutters are hobby units at best.
Still using the same thing! I'm hoping it holds out long enough to make enough money to upgrade to a better setup. The Hypertherm 45 is probably all the bigger I would need, but its still out of my price range right now.
It ran ok for all the cuts I needed to make last weekend, luckily the couple spots it misfired were on straight cuts, so I was able to manually fire and use the keyboard to finish the cut.
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