Re: CNC PLASMA

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>
> That kind of takes it out of the hobby situation, wouldn't you

say?

> Sounds like the user that wants to use a machine that much would be
> much better off with a professional THC, to match his more

commercial

> orientation and use of the machine. Rutex seems to have a quality
> product from what I have heard.

Have you looked at the Rutex solution? They leave all of the
mechanical part up to the builder and that includes (in my opinion) a
Rube method of extending and retracting a sensor with a solinoid for
height setting and you need to wire up a separate control panel. I
don't think I would refer to it as a "professional" design. For that
classification you have to look at the Hypertherm THC unit. I think
you will find that the soon-to-be-released THC II unit from Sound
Logic (based on the original design) combined with MACH will match up
well to versions costing 5 times the amount.

While I stated you don't need a THC on a plasma unit for hobby use
you can also make the case you don't need Z axis control for most
milling jobs. You could simply modify the code and manually move the
Z down to the next cut level. While there are several guys running
that way, I am sure ALL of them yern for a full Z axis.

Perhaps the authors of DeskCNC could provide the same level of logic
that MACH2 does for the THC circuit and then users of that product
would have a simple low cost solution that matches commercially
available units.