Stumbled here, this video's explanation was excellent. I've developed extensively with GRBL source code and now understand completely how my Pro works. Looking at your other content now. Thanks from Colorado.
Thank you Sir. Very informative video. As an original Crossfire owner that upgraded to the XL package and THC, and of course changing to an 80 amp plasma cutter, I have been chasing a plethora of issues for some time. You have gained a new subscriber and I will be watching all of your videos. Your scientific approach is both informative and clear. You deserve 10x the amount of views that you receive.
Careful…compliments like this make my head swell!! 🤓 Seriously, I glad the info was useful and appreciate your feedback. I’d love to have an 80 amp cutter so I’m jealous.
Thank you so much for your video. I've never been around these tables or used one. I have one in the basement in boxes.. I have literally been racking my brain trying to figure out if they use electricity to tell that touch the metal or how in the world they can tell it touched the metal thank you so much for that. Also I want to tell you I am not the smartest person in the world, and I've always thought G-Code was something for somebody that had a brain five times the size of mine. Thank you so much for describing G-Code and helping me understand what it did. I understand it now. Thank you so much. Truth be known I'm actually pretty interested in it! I love your description and can't wait to get to next video, and again thank you very much. PS I watched the entire
Thx for the kind words. I had another viewer tell me he plays my videos at 1.5 speed and it helps cause I’m a slow talker!! 🤓. By the way…I like your cross logo!
Thank you so much for your videos im a tool and die maker and you scientific approach to solving problems is spot on. I learned a bunch the will help me produce quality parts. Thank you so much for taking the time to help 👍😀🤙🤟🤪
Thx for the kind words Daniel. As a self taught (or should I say UA-cam taught 🤓) hobby machinist I have always admired the skills of tool and die makers and would love to have had the opportunity to learn their skills. I spent 25 years in an Air Force weapons R&D lab as a Mech Engineer but snuck into the machine shop every chance I had to observe and appreciate the skills necessary to turn raw material into useful things that were often works of art in my eyes.
Thank you for taking the time to produce this video. Gives me a better understanding, not only for cutting, but for using a scribe tool I purchased. Happy 4th!
That was a great tutorial thank you for taking the time to tape and present it. I am looking forward to the discussion using voltage to determine cut height. I will check the Langmuir site for the guidance on this to start learning about it.....Great job
Great video! Just ordered my Pro last week and am watching all the videos I can before I get it so when I do I am ready. Love how detailed you made it. One thought, can you put a negative number in spring back to compensate for the wear of the plastic nut?
What will cause the torch head to retract up and stay up after it’s initial cut. It moves to its second cut, torch comes on but it does not come down to the plate.
I'd think there must be a bind somewhere or the coupling isn't tight! Can you see if the motor shaft is turning? I have put a thin line of yellow paint on all my x, y, and z leadscrews that goes across the motor shaft, the coupler, and the leadscrews. I can then do a quick visual check and if the line has shifted I know the coupler has slipped. if there is a loose coupler then moving the torch up should be where slippage occurs since it is working against gravity but make sure the coupler doesn't slip on the downward motion as well. Also, clean the contacts and make sure the connectors are OK as the IHS must see them closed during the down motion until the torch contacts the top of the plate which makes them open and then seeing them close when again as the torch raises to the 0.5" position. If the contacts are dirty the torch will continue to go up a minimum of 0.5". I have had the torch cable get tight enough to hold the torch up but that is only at the extreme edges of the table but you might want to make sure the torch cable is allowing the torch to move down. Another thing to verify is that the z-axis rails and guide rollers aren't too tight or have some crud on them that keeps the torch from moving down. Finally, you could write a simple g-code that moves the torch to different spots on the table and then moves the torch up and down a few time and see if there is any problems. hope this helps. thx Dan
Hey David…sorry for delayed reply…was out if town with no Wi-Fi access. To be honest I’ve not measured the voltage on the IHS contacts so can’t say for sure but the IHS board has to have some verification that contacts have opened and closed. 5v is pretty standard so it would be a good guess. If you decide to measure let me know what you find. I’ll be back in the shop in another week so could check if you want.
@CustomCreations3 My xr came without the ihs cable. They have sent a new one but I'm overseas so shipping would take a while. I opened the box and saw that the plug is a 3 wire plug even though the other end is 2 wire. The three wires come from pins on the pcb marked 5v gnd and ihs. I did eventually test the 2 wires coming from the switch connected to 5v and ihs. This corresponded to a correct display of the ihs system in fire control. Best guess is the ground wire is used for shielding of the cable. Thanks for the feedback though. Really insightful video
Thank you for making these videos! I was wondering if you could help me with a question I have about Fire Control? Can you offset the program in Fire Control to get a dimensionally accurate part instead of going back into Fusion and changing the settings? Is there a way to change the kerf width in Fire Control? Thanks again!
Hey James, I’m not aware of anyway to change kerf width or do any offsetting in FireControl. The scaling will let you tweak dimensions but it changes everything in the cut. The kerf width is used by Fusion as it calculates the cut path accounting for the kerf but once it has done the calculation and you post the cut file you can’t really do to much. If it was a simple geometry like a circle or square you could theoretically modify the Gcode but that would be really tricky. I’ve has trouble getting dimensionally accurate cuts too on the Langmuir table and am thinking of creating a video and try and systematically adjust various parameters to see if there are some calibration we can do to correct the problem.
Thx Mauricio, I think there are pros and cons for either the ohmic contact or the floating z axis designs. Note: there is a difference between ohmic “sensing” and ohmic contact sensing. Ohmic sensing can be utilized in height control while cutting and changes in the ohms (electrical resistance) is related to the arc voltage…less ohms will result in higher arc voltage and higher ohms gets you lower arc voltage. But I think your question is for the ohmic “contact” sensor since that is really used just for sensing the initial contact of the torch to the plate. The “pro” for the ohmic contact sensor is that it does not impart weight to the plate like the floating axis design does. As soon as electrical contact is made the z motion stops thus you don’t have to try and compensate for the spring back like you do in the floating axis design. I think the “con” for the ohmic contact is that the contact may get dirty and the contact sensing may suffer. The “pro” for the floating z axis design is that a dirty contact is less likely because of the self cleaning contact design (at least Langmuir’s design) but the “con” is that they have to compensate for the plate spring back and unless you are willing to carefully set the spring back variable depending on the material you wind up with the same value being use for thin materials (where spring back can be significant) and thick materials that have no real spring back. Great question! Thx Dan
@@CustomCreations3 thanks Dan, your quick answer, it was very useful, i agree with you in everything, thanks for sharing your knowledge and the time that it takes to make the videos
@@CustomCreations3 it has to do with the explanation where you talk about backlash being 13 thou after the spring back command was 40 but it only moved 27 thou. I'm not understanding how the 13 tho of lost movement translated to 13 thou of excess height height when you placed the gauge blocks underneath to measure. Also I seems like maybe langmuire added the extra 20 thou to accommodate this. Also I just made my first cut on a crossfire xr the other day and I'm learning alot of new things like g code commands thanks.
Would love to have an XR! All the “extra” height added to pierce and cut is due the value you use for spring back plus the .020” added in the post processor. No matter what you choose as the spring back value the post processor adds .020” to that amount. That’s why the measured value is always greater than what you thought it should be. If you didn’t have backlash the measured value would be spring back + .020” that is added by the post processor but due to backlash it is less than the .020”. So if you set spring back value to 0.0 on a plate that had no spring back and there was no backlash you would see your actual measured pierce height and cut height to be .020” too high because of the value added in the post. But because of backlash it is less than .020”. In my example I had a plate with no spring back and set the spring back value to 0.0 thus you should only see the additional .020” added to the pierce and cut height. Yet when I measured it was only an addition .007” and not .020” the difference was .013 caused by backlash. Now add a value of .020 for spring back and your measured values on a plate with zero spring back should be .040 to high but with backlash I only measured .027, again the difference was the backlash. The stepper knows how many rotations it takes to get the .040” and turns the correct amount of rotation but the backlash results in the torch only raising .027” thus there was .013” of backlash. I believe Langmuir adds this .020” in the post processor to compensate for the backlash knowing on new machines it is likely much less than .020” but on machines with wear it may be much closer to .020”. I’ve done some test cuts on 11 gage varying cut height and it didn’t have much effect on the cut (some bevel differences but not too much on dross) so adding this .020” may be some insurance against a user making a poor choice of spring back value where you could drag the torch if your backlash was significant.
Great videos and i think that what your describing with IHS is exactly what my problem is...im trying to run gecode that will allow me to measure the springback and distance to the plate but fire control wont let me load the Gcode...i keep getting "no program speed found" is there some way i could get a copy of the GEcode you used?
See if the file at the following link to my google drive is what you need. Let me know if you have trouble getting to it! drive.google.com/file/d/1IHPdcAJ0AxkE2cbm5KTT9arpwsnnoF12/view?usp=sharing
@CustomCreations3 I was still getting the same error...I managed to make file with a few half inch cuts and I put 20 second pauses at each height in the gecode. I have mine all sorted now. Book calls for .06 cut height but I was actually sitting at .100. When I set my cut height to .02 it's pretty bang on .06. Thanks for making the all the videos. I never would have thought to go about troubleshooting this way.
@@phytoswillams7835 that’s strange…the message “no program speed found” is not one I’ve seen before. Regardless I’m glad you worked out the height issue. I have had some a height issues due to a slipping coupling. Setscrew were stripped! The lead screw would slip about a half turn in each direction which lead to some wacky height issues. Might want to verify you don’t have that problem.
Many thanks for your thorough, informative and easy-to-understand videos. They are greatly appreciated!
thx Jack...glad to know the info was useful
after 4 months I finally just got my box 3 of 3 so... I'm really liking your setup and learning a lot for your videos, thank you
Thx for the kind comments. Hope you enjoy your new table as much as I’ve enjoyed mine!
Just discovered your channel ! Cant thank you enough I have been struggling and I believe using the voltage settings is going to be a game changer!!
Glad to know I have helped. I’ve learned so much from other UA-cam videos that I’m grateful I can do the same for others! Thanks for the compliment
Stumbled here, this video's explanation was excellent. I've developed extensively with GRBL source code and now understand completely how my Pro works. Looking at your other content now. Thanks from Colorado.
Thanks for the compliment! Glad it helped.
Thank you Sir. Very informative video.
As an original Crossfire owner that upgraded to the XL package and THC, and of course changing to an 80 amp plasma cutter, I have been chasing a plethora of issues for some time. You have gained a new subscriber and I will be watching all of your videos. Your scientific approach is both informative and clear. You deserve 10x the amount of views that you receive.
Careful…compliments like this make my head swell!! 🤓 Seriously, I glad the info was useful and appreciate your feedback. I’d love to have an 80 amp cutter so I’m jealous.
Thank you so much for your video. I've never been around these tables or used one. I have one in the basement in boxes.. I have literally been racking my brain trying to figure out if they use electricity to tell that touch the metal or how in the world they can tell it touched the metal thank you so much for that. Also I want to tell you I am not the smartest person in the world, and I've always thought G-Code was something for somebody that had a brain five times the size of mine. Thank you so much for describing G-Code and helping me understand what it did. I understand it now. Thank you so much. Truth be known I'm actually pretty interested in it! I love your description and can't wait to get to next video, and again thank you very much.
PS I watched the entire
Thx for the kind words. I had another viewer tell me he plays my videos at 1.5 speed and it helps cause I’m a slow talker!! 🤓. By the way…I like your cross logo!
Thank you!! This was well laid out and a pleasure to watch. I learned quite a bit and am looking forward to watching your other videos.
Thank you so much for your videos im a tool and die maker and you scientific approach to solving problems is spot on. I learned a bunch the will help me produce quality parts. Thank you so much for taking the time to help 👍😀🤙🤟🤪
Thx for the kind words Daniel. As a self taught (or should I say UA-cam taught 🤓) hobby machinist I have always admired the skills of tool and die makers and would love to have had the opportunity to learn their skills. I spent 25 years in an Air Force weapons R&D lab as a Mech Engineer but snuck into the machine shop every chance I had to observe and appreciate the skills necessary to turn raw material into useful things that were often works of art in my eyes.
Thank you for taking the time to produce this video. Gives me a better understanding, not only for cutting, but for using a scribe tool I purchased. Happy 4th!
Glad you enjoyed it!
That was a great tutorial thank you for taking the time to tape and present it. I am looking forward to the discussion using voltage to determine cut height. I will check the Langmuir site for the guidance on this to start learning about it.....Great job
Thx...THC is coming ASAP! :)
Thanks so much taking time to make this video. I learned a lot thanks again.
Thx Jon
Great video.... very informative. Thanks!
Thank you this was very educational
Great Video Thank you.
Great video! Just ordered my Pro last week and am watching all the videos I can before I get it so when I do I am ready. Love how detailed you made it. One thought, can you put a negative number in spring back to compensate for the wear of the plastic nut?
Thx for the kind words. Hope you enjoy your table as much as I have enjoyed mine. I hope to have some new vids soon
What will cause the torch head to retract up and stay up after it’s initial cut. It moves to its second cut, torch comes on but it does not come down to the plate.
I'd think there must be a bind somewhere or the coupling isn't tight! Can you see if the motor shaft is turning?
I have put a thin line of yellow paint on all my x, y, and z leadscrews that goes across the motor shaft, the coupler, and the leadscrews. I can then do a quick visual check and if the line has shifted I know the coupler has slipped. if there is a loose coupler then moving the torch up should be where slippage occurs since it is working against gravity but make sure the coupler doesn't slip on the downward motion as well.
Also, clean the contacts and make sure the connectors are OK as the IHS must see them closed during the down motion until the torch contacts the top of the plate which makes them open and then seeing them close when again as the torch raises to the 0.5" position. If the contacts are dirty the torch will continue to go up a minimum of 0.5".
I have had the torch cable get tight enough to hold the torch up but that is only at the extreme edges of the table but you might want to make sure the torch cable is allowing the torch to move down.
Another thing to verify is that the z-axis rails and guide rollers aren't too tight or have some crud on them that keeps the torch from moving down.
Finally, you could write a simple g-code that moves the torch to different spots on the table and then moves the torch up and down a few time and see if there is any problems.
hope this helps.
thx
Dan
So when contact is made 5v is applied to ihs wire and when contacts open 5v is disconnected from ihs wire?
Hey David…sorry for delayed reply…was out if town with no Wi-Fi access. To be honest I’ve not measured the voltage on the IHS contacts so can’t say for sure but the IHS board has to have some verification that contacts have opened and closed. 5v is pretty standard so it would be a good guess. If you decide to measure let me know what you find. I’ll be back in the shop in another week so could check if you want.
@CustomCreations3 My xr came without the ihs cable. They have sent a new one but I'm overseas so shipping would take a while. I opened the box and saw that the plug is a 3 wire plug even though the other end is 2 wire. The three wires come from pins on the pcb marked 5v gnd and ihs. I did eventually test the 2 wires coming from the switch connected to 5v and ihs. This corresponded to a correct display of the ihs system in fire control. Best guess is the ground wire is used for shielding of the cable. Thanks for the feedback though. Really insightful video
Thank you for making these videos! I was wondering if you could help me with a question I have about Fire Control? Can you offset the program in Fire Control to get a dimensionally accurate part instead of going back into Fusion and changing the settings? Is there a way to change the kerf width in Fire Control?
Thanks again!
Hey James, I’m not aware of anyway to change kerf width or do any offsetting in FireControl. The scaling will let you tweak dimensions but it changes everything in the cut. The kerf width is used by Fusion as it calculates the cut path accounting for the kerf but once it has done the calculation and you post the cut file you can’t really do to much. If it was a simple geometry like a circle or square you could theoretically modify the Gcode but that would be really tricky.
I’ve has trouble getting dimensionally accurate cuts too on the Langmuir table and am thinking of creating a video and try and systematically adjust various parameters to see if there are some calibration we can do to correct the problem.
hi, cool video, which one is the best between ohmic sensor and floating axis?
Thx Mauricio,
I think there are pros and cons for either the ohmic contact or the floating z axis designs. Note: there is a difference between ohmic “sensing” and ohmic contact sensing. Ohmic sensing can be utilized in height control while cutting and changes in the ohms (electrical resistance) is related to the arc voltage…less ohms will result in higher arc voltage and higher ohms gets you lower arc voltage. But I think your question is for the ohmic “contact” sensor since that is really used just for sensing the initial contact of the torch to the plate.
The “pro” for the ohmic contact sensor is that it does not impart weight to the plate like the floating axis design does. As soon as electrical contact is made the z motion stops thus you don’t have to try and compensate for the spring back like you do in the floating axis design. I think the “con” for the ohmic contact is that the contact may get dirty and the contact sensing may suffer.
The “pro” for the floating z axis design is that a dirty contact is less likely because of the self cleaning contact design (at least Langmuir’s design) but the “con” is that they have to compensate for the plate spring back and unless you are willing to carefully set the spring back variable depending on the material you wind up with the same value being use for thin materials (where spring back can be significant) and thick materials that have no real spring back.
Great question!
Thx Dan
@@CustomCreations3 thanks Dan, your quick answer, it was very useful, i agree with you in everything, thanks for sharing your knowledge and the time that it takes to make the videos
So confused
Not demystified huh? Tell me what is confusing and I’ll see if I can help
@@CustomCreations3 it has to do with the explanation where you talk about backlash being 13 thou after the spring back command was 40 but it only moved 27 thou. I'm not understanding how the 13 tho of lost movement translated to 13 thou of excess height height when you placed the gauge blocks underneath to measure. Also I seems like maybe langmuire added the extra 20 thou to accommodate this. Also I just made my first cut on a crossfire xr the other day and I'm learning alot of new things like g code commands thanks.
Would love to have an XR! All the “extra” height added to pierce and cut is due the value you use for spring back plus the .020” added in the post processor. No matter what you choose as the spring back value the post processor adds .020” to that amount. That’s why the measured value is always greater than what you thought it should be. If you didn’t have backlash the measured value would be spring back + .020” that is added by the post processor but due to backlash it is less than the .020”. So if you set spring back value to 0.0 on a plate that had no spring back and there was no backlash you would see your actual measured pierce height and cut height to be .020” too high because of the value added in the post. But because of backlash it is less than .020”. In my example I had a plate with no spring back and set the spring back value to 0.0 thus you should only see the additional .020” added to the pierce and cut height. Yet when I measured it was only an addition .007” and not .020” the difference was .013 caused by backlash. Now add a value of .020 for spring back and your measured values on a plate with zero spring back should be .040 to high but with backlash I only measured .027, again the difference was the backlash. The stepper knows how many rotations it takes to get the .040” and turns the correct amount of rotation but the backlash results in the torch only raising .027” thus there was .013” of backlash.
I believe Langmuir adds this .020” in the post processor to compensate for the backlash knowing on new machines it is likely much less than .020” but on machines with wear it may be much closer to .020”. I’ve done some test cuts on 11 gage varying cut height and it didn’t have much effect on the cut (some bevel differences but not too much on dross) so adding this .020” may be some insurance against a user making a poor choice of spring back value where you could drag the torch if your backlash was significant.
Thanks for the reply. That all makes sense I may have just needed to watch one more time.
Great videos and i think that what your describing with IHS is exactly what my problem is...im trying to run gecode that will allow me to measure the springback and distance to the plate but fire control wont let me load the Gcode...i keep getting "no program speed found" is there some way i could get a copy of the GEcode you used?
See if the file at the following link to my google drive is what you need. Let me know if you have trouble getting to it!
drive.google.com/file/d/1IHPdcAJ0AxkE2cbm5KTT9arpwsnnoF12/view?usp=sharing
@CustomCreations3 thank you sir!
@CustomCreations3 I was still getting the same error...I managed to make file with a few half inch cuts and I put 20 second pauses at each height in the gecode. I have mine all sorted now. Book calls for .06 cut height but I was actually sitting at .100. When I set my cut height to .02 it's pretty bang on .06. Thanks for making the all the videos. I never would have thought to go about troubleshooting this way.
@@phytoswillams7835 that’s strange…the message “no program speed found” is not one I’ve seen before. Regardless I’m glad you worked out the height issue. I have had some a height issues due to a slipping coupling. Setscrew were stripped! The lead screw would slip about a half turn in each direction which lead to some wacky height issues. Might want to verify you don’t have that problem.
@CustomCreations3 it's a brand new table but ill check to make sure regardless. Thanks again!!