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I haven't put any effort into THC yet; but I have been working the table for an hour or two each week.
I have burned out several smaller pieces of artwork, letters, etc. I made up link brackets,...

I elected to start off cheap/simple for my Z-axis and bought the DC gearmotor Z axis off of Ebay. It arrived last night; actually seems to be a reasonably well-built piece considering the cost. ...

Threw together a quick video of the table in operation with the new drives (inclduing a clip with one old drive and one new drive for comparison):

https://youtu.be/TrQcLBWscjQ

I hadn't thought about needing to go faster on thin material for clean cuts; its just something I do naturally with the hand torch. I was more concerned with not being able to go slow enough without...

No; I hadn't considered it yet.
My current power supply is a fairly large transformer and rectifier (not sure of the specs on it; haven't looked at it in detail but based on the size I'm guessing...

No, I haven't. I did just look at their website; looks like an "all-in-one" CAD/CAM system? They don't have prices listed...I'll give them a call.
I have purchased a license for sheetcam, but...

If I understand correctly, that system senses torch arc voltage for THC (similar to others) but has a small current transformer that senses ground current to create an "arc OK" signal.

Thought I would post some various THC options here; maybe somebody has tried one or more of them:

RobotT3 system:
THC3T 03 Stand Alone Plasma Torch Height Controller | eBay
Manufacturer's site: ...

I fooled around a little more with my stepper drives tonight; after a bit of time with the oscilloscope and and DVOM I have come to the conclusion that they are not capable of microstepping. This...

A couple of options for my Z-axis:

This one is a cheap chinese unit with a DC gearmotor; the idea would be to remove the gearmotor and replace it with a stepper. It does look like an inexpensive...

Sometimes my detailed responses come across as "pissed off." That wasn't the case! Just trying to clarify things...

A larger percentage of the THC systems that I have looked at use this method; my understanding of how it works goes something like this:

Plasma cutting is a constant current process. The voltage...

Thanks! I was looking at those controllers on ebay several days ago; I'm wary of cheap Chinese Ebay stuff!
I was also looking at this system here:
Texas MicroCircuits CNC Torch Height Controller...

Other vendors sell Mach4 hobby licenses; I was willing to push some $$ toward CandCNC instead of other vendors in exchange for some of their time and expertise.


This might be true; but so far...

I spoke with somebody at CandCNC this morning (it wasn't Tom, as he was not available). I actually called yesterday afternoon; but nobody was available to speak with me (it was close to their...

I can't seem to figure out which drives I have...based on some google mining I don't think I have 6410's.
I spent a little bit of time fooling with them last night. One of the potentiometers...

My laptop ran the software fine, and communicated with the ESS fine. Every few minutes it would lock up and require me to close it in the task manager and also power cycle the ESS.
I may have had...

Made my first cuts with the table. I set up the camera in case something spectacular happened. Everything went well for the first cut but I had the feed speed set too high for the 1/4" material...

It was my understanding that Mach 3 itself runs fine on a 64bit machine, but you cannot use the parallel port plugin. Since my laptop doesn't have a parallel port and I am running an ESS that didn't...

I do not see any numbers anywhere on the stepper drives; but I can't see the backside of the boards very well. There might be something back there. My power supply/interface/motor drive box already...

I managed to put in a couple of hours on the CNC table yesterday; I installed both Mach3 and Mach4. I tried to set everything up in Mach3 first as I had a little bit of prior experience with it but...

I had to go with some kind of external motion control board because every one of my current PC's are 64 bit systems, including my shop computer and my laptop. Mach3 won't run the parallel interface...

Not really; I have used Mach 3 before and felt comfortable with it...so I just decided to stick with it. I'm always open to suggestions though...if I get frustrated with Mach3 I'll do some digging on...

Thanks, I will give Tom a call today.

I went ahead and ordered the ethernet smoothstepper and a power supply; I figured I would try to set that up with my existing motors and drives. That way I...

Hello everybody!

First post here on CNCzone.
A bit about me:
I'm a bit of a metalworking hobbyist; I have a lathe and milling machine, ironworker, tubing bender, and several welders in my...