hello i recently bought a 4 by 4 cnc plasma table .It has a 2 axis controller with a sound logic pc-2 route breakout board.Now i dont have thc on the table so for now is it possible to turn on my plasma cutter on through an output though mach 3 to my breakout board.Now how do i use mach 3 to tell when my plasma should come on to cut.

Thanks

will post pictures soon of the table

Your missing a piece. The CAM (g-code generator) tells MACH when to turn on the plasma using a plasma specific POST. MACH figures out which physical output goes active for a specific "M" code. Normal operation is for the M03 to turn on an output (normally output1) and that is mapped to a pin on the BOB that will turn on a relay. The relay on the Sensor card you got with the THC would noramlly be used to turn on the torch but that can be remapped to any pin you have available. 2 axis? Mach uses the third axis as the THC control so how you gonna use that?

www.SoundLogicUS.com with contact info

TOM caudle
www.CandCNC.com

Oky thats makes sense what you are saying about the cam telling mach what outputs to use to turn the plasma on ..So far i got mach to turn on an output pin that turns on the spindle on and off so i will just use that as my torch on /off .

As for the 2 axis part .On my controller i have a B.O.B with 2 gecko drives one for the x axis and one for the y axis ,so do i need another gecko drive for the z axis ? Or does the thc board have a drive for the zaxis stepper motor.

Thanks for the feedback on my questions

Actually a better time to have asked the questions was before you spent the money. Sounds like you may have bought into a partial solution. Two drives drive two motors...period. There are a lot of pieces you may or may not have to buy in addition to what you got. If this was from a table vendor you should expect a level of support from them. If you bought a "work in progresss" then you willl need to go back through some of the build logs on the Zone and bring yourself up to speed on the components you have and what you will need to make it actually function as a plasma cutter.

TOM Caudle
www.CandCNC.com