Hello Everyone
My first post on any forum. I have TM1 that I built in my shop after reading as much as I could on this site and others. I am very pleased & surprised with the accuracy and quality from my setup and my powermax 85. There are a few things I would like to improve upon and one of them is the AVHC piercing light gauge sheet metal while touching the material. Has anyone setup a spring loaded plunger to hold down the material against the material support slats during the time that the torch pierces until the HC starts takes over?
I was thinking about installing another Z axis slide on the torchmate AVHC that will hold a spring loaded plunger similar to this one
https://www.mcmaster.com/#84765a73/=1578b16 . I'm going to attempt to have it extended before the torch initiates a pierce and then retract after the voltage sensing kicks in to control the torch height.
I purchased a few of them and the lower nose force of 1-4 lbs seems like it will do the job just fine and not create too much force for the AVHC to have to overcome. If the plastic nose doesn't hold up to the heat my next choice will be the brass.
A few issues that i foresee:
1 - What if the plunger starts off in or ends up falling into negative space
2 - The plunger may move the material while the torch is moving in between the time the torch pierces and the voltage sensing kicks in.
Should I start in a different direction to solve my problem? Try to incorporate Ohmic sensing or a push button switch into the torchmate system?