Hello,
I have an old oxygen acetylene cnc , I need to change the Z axis while working.
As far as I can see the program can not do this.
So if I send a plain 2D (like laser cutting) G code I should be able to change the Z axis height on the fly.
It would be extra if when the laser light is switched off, so to speak, the head rises, and then when switched on, it descends to the last position.
Is there any way to do this with a macro?
Or any other way?
Thanks in advance for your help!
Hi Frob,
Welcome to the forum.
I did a quick search for how other people create toolpaths for a plasma cutter and stumbled on this guy that has it figured out using vectric software.
You might find it interesting.
Hi @Spamming_Eddie
yes thank you very much, I see you are using macros, there should be a description somewhere to help you with the macro creation.
How can I change the motor speed or feed rate while running?
Because I was thinking here that if the macro had that variable in a place where I could set the time constant or altitude.
press a button to run a macro, perhaps?
@frob I think what you’re asking for here is essentially live torch height control, yes? In that case this would be something you’d want set up in firmware, not on the sender side of things. I believe there’s some work to make this happen with grblHAL as a plugin, but essentially once you start cutting you’d constantly sense the how close the torch is to the material and feed that back to the controller so it can compensate the height automatically, meanwhile the g-code on the sender side remains unchanged.
Sorry to not give you a response sooner, but figured I’d leave this tidbit here in case it was still useful or anyone else came upon this thread 