Best THC for my plasma machine (my baby)

[schwarzeniger]

Hello.
I'm in the stage of finishing build of a 5 x 10 plasma table. The process of building was about 10 months. I took me a while because much as i studied i realized that i made some errors and a lot of changes and improvements i made. Of course all changes cost me a lot.
Now i have a Powermax85 machine, which is a wonderful choice and i want to use a good THC Controller with Mach3 controller.
I spotted couple controllers: PromaTHC, CandCNC, Agelkom THC, Neuron THC, and Razordance DTHC.

I'm staying away from Chinese ones because of poor support or no support at all, poor quality of components used in building their products and lack of warranty and high price for what they are offering.

There are many THC controllers on market. But are all good? So I ask you, actual users.

1. What was the worse thing happened to you because of bad behavior THC.
2. How is actual cutting quality and what THC you use?
3. If you would choose to use a new THC instead of one you have now which one will be? Why is that?
4. I heard of some special functions on THC like, corner slowdown, anti dive, resolution. How useful are them?
5. Professional CNC plasma table use a ohmic sensor for detection of sheet metal. How useful is that? Do you use it?


I will apreciate if you will help me to make right choice.
Thanks

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[bdrotaru]

I've built couple tables and i used couple THC sensor so i will try to answer your questions.
1. Worst thing happened - Torch Break. With Agelkom. Cutting on the edge of plate with capacitive THC is not an option because less metal under the sensor ring the torch will dive until touch metal..
2. Is from your list. For now i'm satisfied but is a new acquisition and i will post my opinions later.
3. Hmm. Hard to say. Do you need a simple AVC or a real THC? Proma looks like a simple AVC. The price is OK. But the torch movement will based only on voltage variation.
4. It's impossible to get straight small circles with air plasma. The cutting speed must be reduced to 60-70% from actual cutting speed to get a satisfied result. Reducing the cutting speed on a simple AVC inside GCODE without disbling THC, the torch will hit the sheet metal.
5. I use a float head. Does exist for sale?

[repauli1]

I just got my CANDCNC up & running, surprised at how well it functions!
I have it on a homemade plasma table, currently using my Hypertherm30 with a DP-03 on it, but I just bought a Hypertherm65, so my new table will get it. I designed my control cabinet to be portable with (2) 16pin Hubbel connectors on it so I can switch tables easly.

[tommylight]

I have biult and installed 4 separate cnc plasma cutters with linuxcnc and proma elektronika THC ( built many more but without THC ) for customers so i can shed some light on the subject.
Proma THC is by far the best solution for 85 % of the needs when dealing with metal plates from 2mm to 6mm and 100 % for anything above 10mm.
It is by far the simplest to install and configure both on the computer side and the THC side.
It is a bit slower at reaction times but with a bit of tweaking i got it to easily folow a 5cm slope over 50cm length at 3m/min speed cutting 3mm mild steel.
So it will do a perfect job if you do not intend to cut corrigated steel plates ( even that can be done but requires lowering of cutting current and speed due to it being very thin ) .
As for linuxcnc it is and will be the most versatile solution for anything from hoby to production ( one of the machines i've built 3 years ago got shut down only once when lightning struck and mesed the computer, otherwise it remained on 24h every day, working from 7am to 11pm. It had a diferent THC that went in flames from lightning so it has a proma THC for 5 months now, still on 24h a day.)
Linuxcnc has corner lock height controlable from 0 to 100% of feed speed, it has pierce delay user selectable, it has pierce heigt selectable, travel switch for floating head is selectable. etc. Everything is in real time and on the main screen including the signal lights for switch, up, down, arc ok, for corner lock when active etc etc.
regards
Tom

[bmquist]

I have biult and installed 4 separate cnc plasma cutters with linuxcnc and proma elektronika THC ( built many more but without THC ) for customers so i can shed some light on the subject.
Proma THC is by far the best solution for 85 % of the needs when dealing with metal plates from 2mm to 6mm and 100 % for anything above 10mm.
It is by far the simplest to install and configure both on the computer side and the THC side.
It is a bit slower at reaction times but with a bit of tweaking i got it to easily folow a 5cm slope over 50cm length at 3m/min speed cutting 3mm mild steel.
So it will do a perfect job if you do not intend to cut corrigated steel plates ( even that can be done but requires lowering of cutting current and speed due to it being very thin ) .
As for linuxcnc it is and will be the most versatile solution for anything from hoby to production ( one of the machines i've built 3 years ago got shut down only once when lightning struck and mesed the computer, otherwise it remained on 24h every day, working from 7am to 11pm. It had a diferent THC that went in flames from lightning so it has a proma THC for 5 months now, still on 24h a day.)
Linuxcnc has corner lock height controlable from 0 to 100% of feed speed, it has pierce delay user selectable, it has pierce heigt selectable, travel switch for floating head is selectable. etc. Everything is in real time and on the main screen including the signal lights for switch, up, down, arc ok, for corner lock when active etc etc.
regards
Tom

I am also looking for a THC, I think I will get the Proma THC, atleast to beginn with, as my table maximum speed/feedrate is 3100mm/min and I never cut anything thinner than 2mm, or atleast in very rare cases, as I lack the speed to make a nice cut. anyway.... my question is, Proma now offers two kinds of THC, the Compact THC SD and Compact THC 150 which one do you recommend? to me it looks like the SD version is not controllable via Mach3 or other CNC software as it takes the step dir signals out of the pc and outputs its own step/dir signals to the motor driver, however it sounds like it is more accurate, as it uses these signals to proportionally follow the slope of the material, they say.... what do you think? and how do you order those? do you simply send them a e-mail or is there an online store?

[tommylight]

If you think you can set up MACH3 for it, go for the 150 for sure, it will wait for an ARC_OK and then start moving. The SD is simpler and requires no set-up in Mach except the usual, it will handle the up/down movement on it's own, but will require G28 or G38 before the start of a cut to find the work piece, that can be done by sheetcam or similar software. On the other hand, the 150 coupled with Linuxcnc works like a charm, there is already a complete config with an how to on this forum and on the Linuxcnc forum, together with videos on how to connect it to an older plasma cutter etc. If you have spare inputs on the BOB, go for the 150. I have 3 of them installed on production machines, and they never fail. I also have 1 SD mounted and working without a hitch, ever.
On a side note, i have developed and built a new version of THC with a big display, lots of setings and much faster, made to my spec and my extensive experience with plasma cutters and electronics, configurable to every plasma cutter, able to work with Linuxcnc and mach3 natively, etc etc. More info as it develops.
Tom

[asuratman]

How thick you cut plate? How do you cut 2" plate with? Somebody here have some experience with flame cutting, do you use Flame cutting THC? Can you share your experience with it in here.

[bmquist]

If you think you can set up MACH3 for it, go for the 150 for sure, it will wait for an ARC_OK and then start moving. The SD is simpler and requires no set-up in Mach except the usual, it will handle the up/down movement on it's own, but will require G28 or G38 before the start of a cut to find the work piece, that can be done by sheetcam or similar software. On the other hand, the 150 coupled with Linuxcnc works like a charm, there is already a complete config with an how to on this forum and on the Linuxcnc forum, together with videos on how to connect it to an older plasma cutter etc. If you have spare inputs on the BOB, go for the 150. I have 3 of them installed on production machines, and they never fail. I also have 1 SD mounted and working without a hitch, ever.
On a side note, i have developed and built a new version of THC with a big display, lots of setings and much faster, made to my spec and my extensive experience with plasma cutters and electronics, configurable to every plasma cutter, able to work with Linuxcnc and mach3 natively, etc etc. More info as it develops.
Tom

OK thanks, for the clarifying, I will go for the 150 unit, I already sent e-mail to proma-elektronika a week ago and still have not received any reply, how did you order yours, did you send them e-mail? if so what e-mail did you use, or did you maybe buy it from another dealer that has their products for sale?

[tommylight]

I ordered them from proma directly on ebay, Lukaszh??? ( one of the owners i think) was very helpful and e-mail replies where always on time ( like inside a day ).
Let us know how it goes.
Tom

[schwarzeniger]

A long time ago i asked about best THC. Today i was looking at number of pierces of my THC and i just passed 300K pierces.
If you are looking for best THC to use in production i'm recommending to all Neuron THC

[OlfCNC]

A long time ago i asked about best THC. Today i was looking at number of pierces of my THC and i just passed 300K pierces.
If you are looking for best THC to use in production i'm recommending to all Neuron THC

+1 for the neuronTHC and with UCCNC.

[Fabcats]

A long time ago i asked about best THC. Today i was looking at number of pierces of my THC and i just passed 300K pierces.
If you are looking for best THC to use in production i'm recommending to all Neuron THC

Hello,
We are doing an upgrade with Neuron Lite using Mach3. For some reason we can not get Neuron Lite to function properly. We have tried resolving issues with emails back and forth to Andrew the developer with little success.
We noticed the Post Processor says built for Simplicity however we have the Lite version. Are you using Neuron Lite with Mach3...and if so could you send me a sample Gcode to test.
At the moment we try to do a test run and torch does touch off on material to find height goes to proper pierce height, fires torch ...but then raises to top limit Zaxis while torch is on. It will not advance to next line of gcode until we turn off torch.
Also have some parameters that are labelled in Russian which makes things even more frustrating.

Thanks,
Andre

[bdrotaru]

Hello,
We are doing an upgrade with Neuron Lite using Mach3. For some reason we can not get Neuron Lite to function properly. We have tried resolving issues with emails back and forth to Andrew the developer with little success.
We noticed the Post Processor says built for Simplicity however we have the Lite version. Are you using Neuron Lite with Mach3...and if so could you send me a sample Gcode to test.
At the moment we try to do a test run and torch does touch off on material to find height goes to proper pierce height, fires torch ...but then raises to top limit Zaxis while torch is on. It will not advance to next line of gcode until we turn off torch.
Also have some parameters that are labelled in Russian which makes things even more frustrating.

Thanks,
Andre

Hi Andre
It seems that you have a old version of mach3 plugin. Last time i used mach3 with this Neuron THC all Russian characters not existed anymore.
At this moment, AFAIK, development of plugin for mach3 was deprecated due the limitations of mach3.
I'm still using Neuron THC with UCCNC software and controller.
However i think i can offer you a little help if you are sure that all your wiring is done right (voltage divider, float head or ohmic, and control buttons).
All that options you will find in the plugin make this so great but you have to understand them. And for that you need to carefully read Neuron manual.
Since your Z axis is controlled by the Neuron proper postprocessor to use is "Mach3 Plasma no Z"
Also you will need to check ArcOK signal because if Neuron THC doesn't sense this signal will automatically turn off torch. So is a good way to start with ArcOK signal. (what kind of plasma you own?, how did you wire Neuron thc to plasma?)

[repauli1]

Hello,
We are doing an upgrade with Neuron Lite using Mach3. For some reason we can not get Neuron Lite to function properly. We have tried resolving issues with emails back and forth to Andrew the developer with little success.
We noticed the Post Processor says built for Simplicity however we have the Lite version. Are you using Neuron Lite with Mach3...and if so could you send me a sample Gcode to test.
At the moment we try to do a test run and torch does touch off on material to find height goes to proper pierce height, fires torch ...but then raises to top limit Zaxis while torch is on. It will not advance to next line of gcode until we turn off torch.
Also have some parameters that are labelled in Russian which makes things even more frustrating.

Thanks,
Andre

Don't know where you are located, but Andrew is 9hrs difference from Illinois. I would suggest you work with him thru Telegram and TeamViewer versus emails. He seems to be avaiable around 5AM-8AM CST You will love it once you get bugs worked out!

[bdrotaru]

Don't know where you are located, but Andrew is 9hrs difference from Illinois. I would suggest you work with him thru Telegram and TeamViewer versus emails. He seems to be avaiable around 5AM-8AM CST You will love it once you get bugs worked out!

repauli is right!
Andrew is a great guy and when i had issues with plasma config always helped me. email is worst option.