Arcdroid annoying issues

General Discussion
1

Heres a small list of things that would make this more fun to use.

  1. pause dosent pause
    When I hit pause its usually because theres an issue and I want it to pause right away, not at some random time in the future. I want to be able to clear off that slag bump, not stop after plowing into it and spinning the machine off kilter. This is particularly annoying since hitting stop requires me to unplug the torch and run thru the entire cut again without firing, then reconnecting power.
    This alone has already wasted hours of my time.

  2. off delay not programmed very good
    When theres an off delay it dosent make sense to just sit there wasting air and time.
    It would make sense to tap the trigger right when it goes to sense height to shut the cutter off that way the start works properly. If the trigger tap was within a second of the programmed value you could have it wait a second to verify that the torch has shut off to avoid the possibility of getting mixed up if the value isnt input exactly perfect.

  3. plasma cutters do have a delay when firing when in postflow
    I was told firing in postflow dosent matter on hypertherm cutters and is only an issue on cheap cutters.
    This is wrong and I have tried 2 45xp and a pmx65 cutters. They all delay enough that it will mess up the pierce most of the time if you have the pierce delay set properly. No issues when I manually tap the trigger during the height sensing phase.
    This is annoying because the off delay is slow and wastes air, and I would like to not have to stand there and tap a button that software is perfectly able to do.
    Many of us have to turn off the compressor to run the cutter leaving us with no choice but to stand there.
    When set fast enough on thin material it is clear to see that the arc dosent fire during the pierce, and fires after the torch has already started to lower to the cut height, and no I dont have some sticky solenoid or something. Every blowback cutter on the planet has to release pressure in the line to seat the electrode, apply power, repressurize the line, this all takes time and theres no way around that.

  4. minimum firing time too long
    Pretty self explanatory, the minimum firing time is too long, I cant think of any reason why it cant be shorter. Its preventing me from making drill here marks.
    No its not the cutter as I can do them with the hand torch.

5.height sensing a real pain when oxy fuel cutting.
Would be nice to have an option to disable the height sensing peck.
This is extra irritating when issue 1 happens and you have to sit there for the entire re run since it will error out on every hole you cut with a lead in since it wont even touch the material.
This is doubled by the fact oxy fuel goes with heavy plate and very slow travel speeds.

  1. crazy half circle arc in simpletrace
    Dosent bother me too much since I almost exclusively use sheetcam gcode, but I heard the crazy arc issue being blamed on the dxf format.
    I have had it a few times when rotating gcode files so that rules out being a dxf file issue.
    Hopefully this helps finding the issue

Everything other than #5 could be fixed quite easily and would really improve the product.

Hopefully this helps

2

Okay I’ll Address this

1: Pause will always pause at the end of the current movement (IE it finished the line it is working on). This is inherent in the way the motion planner works in Marlin and not something we can get around easily in this design. We are Addressing it in the new machine however.
Also no need to unplug your torch. You can simple disable the torch on screen (red lines on the lightning bolt) and wait until it reached the correct spot and just tap to enable it again. It will pause for pierce delay and fire the torch

2: I’m not sure what you are asking for there? Could you explain yourself better? Off delay is only there to allow for cooling of the torch between cuts. This can be a problem with low Duty cycle plasma cutters . So it is basically holding at the end of a cut to allow post flow to will reduce load on the Plasma and it’s consumables. It is however not used very often. In fact I almost never use off delay.

3: I think you are using the Peirce delay setting incorrectly. PD is there Specifically to hold still at the beginning of each cut and allow for the start up time it takes to ignite/reignite the arc. If your torch is already moving before the arc is struck then you have not set your delay long enough. You also need to lengthen the delay for thicker materials in order to allow time to blow through the metal For instance on 1/4" steel on a HT 45xp I typically use a PD of 0.8-1 sec. On the other hand on Miller 625 it is closer to 2.2 sec. I’m not sure what you are taking about regarding tapping the trigger during height sensing?

4: I don’t understand this at all??? We don’t have a minimum firing time setting? it literally fires for Pierce delay+ whatever time the cut takes. Once again I don’t think you are using the pierce delay setting properly. I have no problem creating drill peck with the same Xp45 as above and a pierce delay on 0.8 and a Hole of 0.1mm diameter no lead. Torch fires for less than 1 sec and leave a perfect divot that can be drilled out late.

5: this is an easy one… set all of you Z heights to Zero in the Tune setting and then the move the head to the height you want manually with the knob. It won’t probe and it won’t change height during cut (although you can tweak it with the knob while cutting). Also If you look at the Z carriage on the AD you notice a threaded hole in the lower section. This is specifically so you can add an M8 bolt to act as an adjustable Z stop. so you can still have the head move up an down but no need for the torch to touch the material.
Please remember the ArcDroid was never designed for Oxy/Fuel and we don’t advertise it as such. However it is very easy to use that way if you use on of the above methods for Z and then hit your favourite PAUSE button during fast move so it holds in place when it gets to the start of a new cut so you can preheat.

5A: this is a Kerf algorithm thing and is most often seen with .dxf files. However we continue to find edge cases wher it breaks. That is why we Completely rewrote the kerf code in the last update. It is much more robust now so I suggest you update your machine.

Hope this answers some of your concerns

Cheers
AM

2 Likes
3

Thanks for taking the time to answer, very useful info that will help quite a bit.

1 Thats cool, I never did try to switch the lightning while on the fly.

For 2 and 3 my issue is that when the cutter (any blowback cutter) is in postflow you cant simply hit the trigger and go without a delay, there is always a delay. A delay that only exists in postflow, and dosent exist when not in postflow.

If you are on thin material and moving fast with a short pierce delay the extra delay will cause the cutter to not even be on for the pierce delay, only coming on during the plunge or after its already started moving.

This will cause it to fail to pierce unless you set the pierce delay excessively long.

The short version is you get 2 completely different pierces depending on if the postflow is going or not.
Right now there are 3 ways to deal with this: (and the downsides)
too long pierce delay, excessive blemish on some starts
add off time, wastes time and air
manually tap the trigger on the cutter to terminate postflow right as the droid goes to sense height, works perfectly, but requires me to sit there tapping a button
You could tap the button anytime but it makes sense to let it postflow while moving.

It would be very simple to tell the droid to tap the trigger if the cutters postflow time hasnt been reached, and if its within a second of the set postflow time make it do a pause after sensing height to be sure the time has passed (to avoid firing on the transition between postflow and none)

  1. “Torch fires for less than 1 sec”, I want to fire for .1 or less for a tiny divot, not a hole.
    Something has a min fire time and its not the cutter.
    I guess the minimum could be coming from sheetcam, Ill test it and report back.

5: Excellent that fixes my issue, this makes it very well suited to oxy fuel.
if you ever did want to market is for oxy fuel this is what I have and its incredible, cheap too.
it has has a off/preheat/cut switch so once its set you just toggle the switch.
no more bevel on any thickness or in corners/holes.

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I am not complaining and quite happy with the arcdroid, but always looking for ways to improve