My PlasmaC Journey

[thefabricator]

Hi All,

I want to put my story out their to help others that are having problems with their DIY CNC plasma machines.

So back in October 2017 I decided to build a large industrial CNC plasma table to cut my workshops parts that we were outsourcing. I decided to buy a CandCNC system as it was promised as turn key. A decision I very much regret.

Once the table was finished I had a number of incidents with the CandCNC controller but the biggest one was the touch off never working properly. I got fed up with their terrible customer support that was one of the reasons I purchased the controler from them. Emails never being answered, being made to feel like an idiot. I was over it. I scrapped the CandCNC controller which I had invested over $10,000 AUD in and built my own and migrated over to PlasmaC. I have never looked back!

My new controller uses a Mesa 7i76e and a THCAD10 to measure the arc voltage. Its very simple and very reliable.

I have over 1500 hours of production cutting with the new controller at this point and have not once had any controller issues. It just works!

[thefabricator]

I cut at least two 3000x1500 sheets per day of parts, and I do not have any issues with the control system or software.

[dodom]

So what is your agenda here. The are literally 1000's of users that have not had your issues. I noticed you showed a table that says State Wide Sheds did you build and sell that?

[acourtjester]

That may be the name of his company, sounds like he have found a solution and is moving on with business.

[Rodw]

I noticed you showed a table that says State Wide Sheds did you build and sell that?

He makes Sheds so his table is used in a heavy duty industrial setting making components for them.

[thefabricator]

So what is your agenda here. The are literally 1000's of users that have not had your issues. I noticed you showed a table that says State Wide Sheds did you build and sell that?

My "agenda" is I want others who buy a product thinking its turn key and for it to continue to fail to know there is alternatives out there that can get them out of trouble.

I really did not know what to do when the CandCNC controller kept failing. I had spent a considerable amount of money and as a last resort decided to start from scratch. Now my machine works everyday without any issues.

I am not selling anything other that hope for those who are in a similar situation.

[thefabricator]

Also their might be 1000's of others who dont have any issues. But what about the ones that do? I dont think its good enough to treat them like crap since you already have their money.

I replaced all the control boards inside the controller a couple of times and still had issues. I also sent the unit back to them twice. I dont know about you but most people at that point would of given up entirely.

I understand my issues I had with their system are probably rare. But if you look and it from the customers perspective, what else was I suppose to do? If we were talking a couple hundred dollars worth of electronics it might be a different story, but what I spent was far from that.

[thefabricator]

Also I did not see this video until just now having a look around but it seems that others in my position have had the same issues. Its funny because I also had a lightning strike at out facility that cause the DTHC card to fail - multiple times,



When that happened we spent a considerable amount of money on a UPS and we still had problems after that!

[dodom]

You should probably pay a little closer attention to the video. This guy ran both controllers 12 hours a day 7 days a week for 2 years. Look at the shop it is filthy. He would drive to our facility from Tennessee if one went down and we would stop everything to repair a unit that literally had pounds of plasma dust in it. He did this 3 times in a two year period. I repeat pounds of plasma dust. Again 12 hours a day 7 days a week his words to us and pounds of plasma dust. He never had an issue with service or the complaint until his warranty ran out . He then demanded that he be refunded all his money. 12 hours a day 7 days a week for two years , drop everything warranty service pounds of plasma dust . Out of warranty I want all of my money back.

[dodom]

We also keep records of all transaction and the records indicate that you might be mistaken on some of your claims

[weldguy]

Well we all know you can't please everyone and sometimes things just don't work out for whatever reason.

Generally I see the C&CNC users very happy and making money with their equipment, I personally have had great success with them.

Bummer it didn't work out this way for you but glad you found something that works for your shop

[thefabricator]

We also keep records of all transaction and the records indicate that you might be mistaken on some of your claims

So you keep records of international shipping cost arranged by myself? And the exchange rate? Really most of the time the shipping was more that the actual part! It all adds up tho.

[thefabricator]

You should probably pay a little closer attention to the video. This guy ran both controllers 12 hours a day 7 days a week for 2 years. Look at the shop it is filthy. He would drive to our facility from Tennessee if one went down and we would stop everything to repair a unit that literally had pounds of plasma dust in it. He did this 3 times in a two year period. I repeat pounds of plasma dust. Again 12 hours a day 7 days a week his words to us and pounds of plasma dust. He never had an issue with service or the complaint until his warranty ran out . He then demanded that he be refunded all his money. 12 hours a day 7 days a week for two years , drop everything warranty service pounds of plasma dust . Out of warranty I want all of my money back.

Well I can understand that he might of not looked after the controller looking at the state of his machine but most of the issues he mentions I have had. My controller was always inside a filtered cabinet,

Really I dont understand why your controllers have so many parts that can fail. I replaced countless boards chasing gremlins to no avail.

My new controller has two boards. A main control board and a board to measure arc voltage. It has four off the shelf self calibrating motor drives, a few 24VDC power supplies, a couple of relays and a toroidal power supply for the motors. Thats it! Not many thing to go wrong and if they do its pretty easy to work out where the problem is.

The other thing is lack of I/O. You might of changed that now but the controller I had was severely limited. I did not know enough about that when I purchased the controller but I soon realized I could not do half the things I can do now with my new controller.

[thefabricator]

I have not wanted to do this but in the interest of transparency and getting this off my chest Ill itemize what I spent on my CandCNC system. I have not added these costs up before and there was a reason why! These prices include the shipping cost I paid.

PlazPak 4 Axis Servo System = 8895.63 AUD
Customs Fees = 1003.23 AUD

1 x HyT Connect RS485 SIM Kit B (without Hub) = $370.54 AUD

1 x PWM module = $270.29 AUD

1 x Table I/O Rev 12 card = $206.85 AUD

1 x Linux Based - Refurbished CommandCNC PC = $577.31 AUD

1x UDCM Module for PlazPak and RouterPak systems
1 x EZPlugII Servo card with RS485
1 x UBOBIII Card
= $705.24 AUD

1 x Front Panel = $283.53 AUD

1 x UDCM Module for PlazPak and RouterPak systems = $346.77 AUD

1 x RAV-02 = $165.23 AUD

1 x Table I/O Rev 12 card
1 x UACM Module for PlazPaks and RouterPaks
= $393.89 AUD

1 x DTHCIV Card – refurbished = $465 AUD

Sending unit back to the US due to an electrical fault that destroyed multiple items including the DTCHIV card the second time = $2000.14 AUD for repairs + $502.73 AUD shipping,

When the unit came back and I powered it up, it spewed out smoke. $541.01 AUD to send the unit back a second time. Addmitadley CandCNC fixed the unit for free the second time and returned it but at that point I had moved on to building my new controller.

Total Cost = $16,727.39 AUD or 11,996.89 USD.


Now I have moved on and there is not much I can do about what happened. But moving forward I just want to let anyone in the same situation know that you can build your own machine and have it work properly if your prepared to learn a bit about electronics and installing and setting up the LinuxCNC software.

[thefabricator]

Well we all know you can't please everyone and sometimes things just don't work out for whatever reason.

Generally I see the C&CNC users very happy and making money with their equipment, I personally have had great success with them.

Bummer it didn't work out this way for you but glad you found something that works for your shop

Yeah I am glad I have a working machine that does what I need. I am sure others have not had my experience but once you go through something like that it changes you.

But at the end of the day as long as I am able to cut my parts I am happy!

[dodom]

Sometimes it is not the machine. When everything burns up it from outside voltage. Glad you got your electrical system in your shop fixed

[thefabricator]

Sometimes it is not the machine. When everything burns up it from outside voltage. Glad you got your electrical system in your shop fixed

Last comment on the matter. The only thing I did to the workshop power supply was install a commercial grade uninterruptable power supply, but I did that just before the last issues.

Personally I think having a bunch of delicate electronics in a environment that is prone to steel dust and electrical noise is asking for trouble. Maybe if it was a controller for a 3d printer or such it would be fine but in a heavy industrial environment its just not up to scratch. That is just my personal opinion and as other have pointed out they dont have issues which is great but in my experience its been the opposite.

[Rodw]

I have heard a number of reports of faults on thefabricator's old hardware attributed to the outside power feed. All I can say is I'm glad I went another way. My shop is in an industrial area and is surrounded by routers, welders and big CNC machines. Matter of fact, I've added a few of my own too. I've never had an issue. All I've done is to add an IEC connector with a built in RFI filter to the mains power inlet and I do not run a ground rod. I would be a sitting duck for sure! it seems strange to me that hardware designed for use on an industrial machine is not able to handle such conditions which must surely be expected in a normal use case.

I will say I did blow up a $69 THCAD card and burn an input on my motion card through my own stupidity. Accidentally, waving a 24 V wire around a 5 V circuit seems to do that sort of thing. After doing a few tests as requested to isolate the exact fault, my hardware supplier created new firmware while I was sleeping that moved the required inputs to other undamaged input pins and I was back in business without replacing a USD $189 card. They even told us how to repair the blown THCAD with a $3.00 component. Thats what I call great service.

[dodom]

Glad you got you electrical problems sorted out as well

[tcaudle]

Rumor has it Rodw and The fabricator are working together to start building tables . There is an agenda here and it needs to be exposed.
Rodw worked for YEARS to get his first table working using LINUX CNC . He had to write some of the code . He had to wait until a cpuple of the LINUXCNC contributors fixed issues and added features. I admire his tenacity and hours he spent writing code . I am less impressed with his hardware design skills.

CandCNC has been building and shipping complete plasma and plasma router systems since 2004. As both an engineering and programming company we adapted the "Embedded Microprocessor" concept from the beginning Much like most modern electronics, the best solution is a mix of technologies. Embedded processors excel at doing specific tasks at high speeds and autonomously from main control programs .

I lot of users just want to be able to have a machine that cuts and not do R & D and stick build everything.

Lets discuss a couple of terms: TurnKey means its a complete running system (You turn the key and it runs and cuts ) We have never used that term to describe our controllers A better moniker for our products is Plug-n-Run. Every table and its mechanics are different. So as the quote goes: " Some assembly is required". If you want a turn key table that can be setup , turned on and start cutting material, you have a broad range of vendors that will do that . One of the most important aspects is SUPPORT. Some table mfgs have good support and others not some not so much . We have OEM table manufacturers that use our controls and will sell you a table to do whatever processes you want (plasma, router, plate marking, rotary plasma, pipe cutting. Remote control of Hypertherm RS485, and other CNC tasks) Some will deliver your table, set it up and show you how to use it . Our OEM's have good support or we drop them

I think for those users that have the time and a low budget, building their own table and spending the hours making it work is a good plan. If you are a hobby level user with spare time, its probably better to go that direction than to invest in one of the turnkey hobby grade tables . LINUXCNC is a good choice if you are comfortable with computers and software. It's been around for decades and its open source (which means you can make changes to the program or get someone in the LINUXCNC group to help you ). Setting up the software is not trivial. Most PC's need adjustments to the BIOS to run the Real time Kernel in LINUXCNC correctly. Some PC's won't run it right no matter what you do. System latency can cause Following Errors (even though you are running an open loop system) Every release of LINUXCNC changes how hardware drivers work and what they support. The compile of the RTK makes a difference.

I wish Rodw success in his crusade and if The Fabricator teams up with him and starts producing tables it will give the AU market some alternatives You will find that ragging on your competitors is a flawed marketing plan. The same old retort gets stale of " Switch to LINUXCNC and PlasMac because its cheap and it runs ANY hardware you have" (wrong).

Any of you are welcome to join our Support Forum and what how we support our produts all of the way back to the early MACH days. I have supported the DIY CNC community for over 20 years (as a co-owner of CAD-CAM-EDM-DRO Yahoo forum for years) and taught classes on using CorelDraw and SheetCAM to build cut files. if you go the to Special Announcements section you will find a coupon that gets you free shipping on a new G5 Most Popular Bundle or the new G5XL bundle for big heavy gantries . Good until Dec31.

[thefabricator]

I do not plan to build and sell tables in the short term. Maybe sometime in the future but I have bigger things to work on for the foreseeable future (six axis robots).

My biggest concern was the level of customer support I received. Emails never being answered, or when they were answered being made to feel like I was the problem. And the fact I spent loads of money on a product that I feel is not industrial quality, which is my fault.

With PlasmaC, yes its taken a while to get where we are but it will indeed work with just about any hardware and will work without issues. I prove that day in day out on my large industrial machine. I set the machine up and it runs all day without any operator intervention except for when the consumables need changing.

[thefabricator]

This is the end result of the large long 25mm plates I showed pictures of in the previous posts. My "agenda" for now is to keep building and selling these,

[thefabricator]

Also to continue the self promotion ( which seems to be the direction this thread is heading), these are some more pictures of another large shed we have recently fabricated,

[Rodw]

Rumours are just that. Rumours!
There is no substance to unsubstantiated reports of thefabricator and I teaming up to sell plasma systems.

I might choose to commercialise my knowledge one day but quite simply, I don't have time or resources to tackle that now. My real business is demanding too much from me right now as it grows at 50% per annum.

Man, I'm not a fabricator! Whilst my spaceship plasma might not look much becasue it was designed from the ground up to be able to be fabricated at home, its now very much commercial quality under the hood and has proven to be a very valuable testbed.

I don't think those that use an embedded microprocessor for their THC have much to worry about from a couple of Aussies that have built their own tables. The real threat will come from new entrants. Have you seen how Tormach does THC with Linuxcnc? The pics I saw seemed to confirm they do it just like thefabricator and I do. I'm sure there will be others planning similar turnkey solutions.

[asuratman]

Hi Rod,
I found nobody selling ohmic sensor for linux cnc ? If available on mesa, then will be easy. Everything from 1 source who know well about this linux. THCAD is out of stock, it looks like everybody move to linuxcnc plasma.