Hello
I am looking for input from anyone who has used a KFLOP and KMOTIONCNC to control a plasma table. I presently have have a plasma table that uses a proprietary close control system with separate torch height controller. This system has a simple user interface and is quite reliable, the fact that allowed me to largely teach myself how to run it and use several tool chains to produce g code from drawings. Now I have discovered many of the short comings of this system and I want improvements that cannot be made because of proprietary code. This is a stepper motor driven system. I really want a system that I have the keys to! Torch height control is the real key to quality cuts and good consumable life and I feel most of the canned lower cost solutions are not that good.
1. Has anyone had good success implementing automated torch height control on the KFLOP? How did you protect the KFLOP from the arc voltage transients, isolation amps, V to F converter and optos, other? What is the torch height control bandwidth you have been able to achieve using the KFLOP? What sort of height control precision have you been able to achieve?
2. Has anyone modified KMOTIONCNC to have a plasma specific interface and incorporating torch height control?
3. How extensive are the KMOTIONCNC examples? I have very limited experience using MS Visual Studio C++ in the Windows environment, is the correct VC++ environment for basic builds included in the examples? Can KMOTIONCNC be built on VS 2005?
4. Is Mach3 a better way to go for user interface and trajectory planner? I know many use it and even some commercial products use it but I hear many horror stories in forums about systems that never get to be stable. I know the pro machinist groups widely disparage it's reliability and performance.
I am not worried about the electrical or mechanical aspects of doing this but the sw side does concern me. The last I did extensive embedded development we used UNIX terminals and command line macros to build. I have very limit experience with Windows environment and VS, found the array of features to be confusing at times. Thank you in advance for your replies.
John