Yay! It’s working guys, it’s finally working! Alleluia!
So, after a lot of hard work, I finally managed to get the plasma cutter to work properly with the MPCNC. It’s been quite a challenge, but now I’m pretty confident the MPCNC will run quite a bit more reliably.
So, what have I done?
-Shielded everything I could shield: all the motor wires are shielded. On the motor side, the motor body is attached to the wire shielding using some breaded copper sleeve. Then on the other side, the motor cables are attached to the control box using some shielded connectors.
-I’ve built a control box to secure all the electronics, including the power supply, the screen, the Arduino.
-All the chassis is grounded
-Plasma torch is shielded (don’t know if this is useful, but probably couldn’t hurt)
It’s been quite a pain to do this, especially since I’ve originally spent so much time on my wiring using RJ45 wires. Cutting and removing all those neat wires was heart breaking. But in the end, the new system turns out to be a bit cleaner.
So, I made a few tests, and as it turns out, I never had the slightest problem with the Arduino or the motors losing steps. So, problem solved!
The results on those pictures look like crap only because I had no way to secure the material in place. At some points the torch touched the work and moved it, ruining everything. But I don’t really care, my point was just to see if it the machine itself would work correctly, and it seems like it did.
So now, I just need to build some kind of cutting table, I’ve purchased some steel and will try to make one soon.
As usual, tons of pictures:
The electronics Faraday box:
[attachment file=45633]
The Common earth ground star center point. Not pretty but I’ll make it cleaner later:
[attachment file=45634]
The Z axis shielding and the torch shielding:
[attachment file=45635]
Motor shielding:
[attachment file=45636]
The MPCNC right after the test cut:
[attachment file=45637]
Test cut results:
[attachment file=45638]
[attachment file=45639]
The metal plate was about 1mm thick, it took something like 30 seconds to cut.
I still need to find the correct settings for the CNC speed and the plasma cutter air pressure/power, but this is probably the easy part.
I think warping during cut will be an issue, though. I may have to build a water table to keep the sheet cool while cutting. I’ll do some more tests to see if this is absolutely necessary.
Anyway, this is a huge step for me, I now have a real multifunction machine capable of 3D printing, CNC milling and plasma cutting with only 5-15 minutes to switch from one tool to another. Just need to try the laser cut feature and I think I’ll pretty much have everything I’ve dreamed of!
Thanks a lot to Ryan who made this possible!
