Initial Height Sense

[Skyport]

Hi all,

I have a plasma table using a Hypertherm Powermax 45XP. It's a water table and has a floating head. I use Sheetcam and Mach3 and the THC is the Polabs PlasmaSens. The table was set up without initial height sensing but I believe it's possible to add this in. Would anyone have tips on how to do this? It's a big loss of time for me without it as I have to re-zero the Z axis every few cuts to allow for sheet warpage. Thanks!

[acourtjester]

2 things the floating head switch should be set to trigger on the Z home input. And the command of G28 in the G-code to do the activity of looking for the metal surface, this will also need a string of code to correct for the switches offset. And then move to the correct pierce height. Next if the Plasmasens is for ohmic sensing there will need to be G-code with a probe command G31 to find the metal surface then do the setup for pierce height. The inputs will need to be to the correct location in the electronics and the correct post processor used for these functions. If you have both floating head switch and ohmic sensor the floating head switch should be setup as a safety and input to the Z limit, if the ohmic sensor fails for any reason.

[Skyport]

Thanks for the reply acourtjester.
Will the correct post processor automatically call these commands? Is there a post processor you'd recommend?
I don't think the Plasmasens is capable of ohmic sensing so I'm limited to floating head for now.

I'm fairly new to all of this and I still have a lot to learn, so your help is greatly appreciated!