Hi, I have an older xyz robot with very good accuracy, but wanted to re-purpose as a Plasma CNC.
I plan on using a Hypertherm 1250.
I was thinking I could use the existing controller which will receive commands via a serial port.
I should be able to write code to send xyz data, but wanted some general (but unique to what I'm trying to accomplish) information.
On the software side, what is reasonably good and reasonably priced software for plasma cutting? I'm experienced with ProE, Solidworks and Autocad and can program Visual Basic and Python. Keep in mind that my goal is to get x-y data out and I need to tell it to move incrementally because the hardware doesn't have control of rate of movement (so I rely on giving it small increments the size of which is experimentally determined). Prefer xyz data out in lieu of G code (more complicated than I need).
On the hardware size other than feed rate which something I can work through with a little programming, is there anything obvious I could be missing.
Here is a similar machine. gilson 215 - YouTube
Thanks,
Tim