Index cutting with the Langmuir Systems CrossFire Pro and Fusion 360

on this tool tips episode of the journey to the baja 1000 we use index cutting to double the cutting size of the landmark systems crossfire pro cnc plasma cutting table hey folks my name is dave thank you for joining us on what is now our third video on the langmuir systems crossfire pro cnc plasma cutting table so after owning the table for a couple months now the verdict is that i love it there is a learning curve to get through some of the issues that some people are having with the table and especially with the fire control but i think i have most of those ironed out so far in my experience with this plasma table there just aren't many things that it cannot do that the big tables can do obviously the main limitation is just the size of the table 33 by 48 inches in the the cutting area today i need to cut something that's 60 inches long and i plan on trying to do an index cut i'm going to use fusion 360 and also this plasma table and see if i can cut something that's greater than the dimensions of the table let's see how it works we'll start on fusion 360. so there are two parts that i see to do an index cut at least the way that i'm doing it and so there's probably different ways this is what i'm doing so first i'm working off of sketches in fusion 360 because i what i would usually use is i make a full body bodies and then i uh make a tool path off of the face of whatever the parts are that i'm having this time i'm using a sketch because i have this open section down here at the bottom so i here's a sketch i want to first cut and this one is done pretty much right off the langmar systems tutorials on how to cut something uh i'll just run through it here really quickly i go through the setup i'm going to go ahead and pick this box point down here um i'm going to remove i don't know why they have this dude is going to remove all the additional stock and then i'm going to call this uh the trailing arm upper first cut and then as i go into the fabrication and the cutting i already have my plasma cutter selected in there i'm cutting 3 16 still so i'm using 50 inches for the normal cut and leading the lead out i'm using 33 inches for those i go through in the profile i'm just going to go ahead and and select all of the lines that i want to have it cut now realize if in your drawing if while you're cutting sketches for whatever reason if you leave a construction line in there which normally wouldn't cut if it was a body it will make a tool path if it is a if it is a sketch i don't know why so just you gotta go and erase your construction lines now what i want this to do is i wanted to cut on the left side which is normal but i also wanted to cut on the outside and then i wanted to i wanted to string one cut to the next i don't want to lift and go over and re-pierce so what i'm going to do is i'm going to go over here and grab this one and i'm going to move it back just in line the same side as the first cut i'm going to do that all the way around to make sure that the tool follows the path that i wanted to i'm going to go ahead and select this contour also and i want to make sure that that is on the inside of that cut because i want that to be an inside cut so there now i have all of those on there i'm i'm gonna go on to this one here select in computer like they tell you to i'm gonna keep the nozzle down uh let me see 33 inches for that 300 inches per minute for that i will do a lead-in radius or lead-in cut at 90 degrees i won't do a lead out and then i want to pierce this position right here and you got to remember that because when i come back into the next tool path i'm going to do that same point just the part inverted the the opposite direction so there i'm going to say okay it's going to create the the tool path and then what i'll do is i'll open up the simulation and i'll run it one time at least and make sure as the thing goes around it's it's smooth and doesn't do any kind of weird stuff that i gotta go back and maybe change uh something so that looks good i'm gonna go ahead and post that g-code uh where i want it to go into my rear suspension stuff trailing arms got two folders for that and there it is uppercase i'm going to post that one now what i want to do is i'm making these trailing arms symmetric so i'm just going to go ahead and invert this thing so i'm going to go back over to design and i'm going to hit the m key the hotkey for move and i'm gonna say let's move all of these parts uh maybe some of the zoom here i don't want the i'm gonna cancel all that because i selected that i searched the point i don't wanna want a point uh move i'll move that i'm gonna move that that piece that piece that piece i want to move this piece and since it's a sketch it's making me do this i'm going to select all these all the way around there now i want to do is just invert this thing so let's spin it around 180 degrees let's put it somewhere in the middle there okay that looks good now i got the same part it's just inverted uh since this thing is mirror image i'm going to go back into manufacturer now and go back to setup same thing i'm going to pick that as my my starting point for the sketch i'm going to take out know what it is i'm going to call this upper trailing arm upper second cut okay and then here's this is where it's going to be a little bit different as i go through the fabrication and specifically the the cutting of uh this part got all the same tool stuff but as opposed to going over here and picking my contours right now i'm going to go over here and this is different and not what landmark system tells you to do i'm going to cut on the right side i'm still put this in computer when i come over here and now i start selecting the the contours that i want to cut now it's going to put the arrow on the right side in relation to the cut direction make sure this is still on the inside so i'll put that back on the inside uh so i wanted again to start at this point i wanted to cut down this so this one over here i gotta swap to the other side let's go in the wrong direction i want that to be on that side now on that side and then now you see now the next time it'll cut it'll come over here so let's go ahead and finish this up all that keep the nozzle down 300. if you don't select 300 there it'll travel at 50 inches per minute between different cuts on there which will just take a little bit more time all right we'll do the lead in hit 90. uh i'm not going to lead out and again now the entry position i want to be the exact same point so i can find it on the table the exact same point that i entered when i cut the opposite side of this thing so i'm going to hit okay and now check out the the tool path for that again i'll run the simulation real quick just to make sure it makes sense awesome it looks good um all right so it's just something to talk about really quickly as i zoom in on this tool path it has this green line right here which is i think the lead-in now realize that if i've gone in here a couple times and i said don't give me a lead in don't give me a lead out i want you actually to fire right at this point right here and for some reason fusion 360 still gives you a lead in at least um and so i couldn't get rid of that i don't know why but what the tools gonna do is gonna come over here and it's gonna basically it wants you to give you this line so it's gonna fire and cut off on the right side as it is traveling remember on the other way it was cutting on the left side so when i uh index the tool i can go in and just put the starting point at exactly the same point and it's going to give me the same cut line if i said cut on the left side i came over here and index the tool to this point then it's going to give me like basically a zigzag by a couple thousands it won't be lined up but by doing it on the left side and then switching it over to the cutting on the right side it lines that cut up exactly when you go back and re-zero to the same point okay so the program is only part one let's go ahead now and do the part two of this index cut which is setting the plate still up in the langmar systems crossfire pro let me show you a couple of tools that i'm using to make sure i get that thing perfectly perpendicular to the motion of the gantry okay so the lane meyer system is set up ready to go i got the sheet metal on there and you can see the problem that i have so i'm trying to cut a piece that's about 57 58 inches long but the table uh from side to this side of this side lengthwise is only 33 inches long it's 48 inches wide so this sheet is about 60 inches long and it's 48 inches wide with your standard uh sheet as you can get and so what i'm going to do is i'm going to go ahead and first try to make this sheet perpendicular as much as i can to the gantry so i'm going to mark a line on there first and then i'll show you how i'm going to make it make sure that it's perpendicular all right so now what i've done is i've used this piece of angle iron on the sheet because i want to put a straight edge all the way down the side i could use the side of the the sheet metal i just didn't feel like it was going to be a good enough reference for me to go back to uh so i did i took my silver welder pencil i just ran through my angle grinder to make sure that i got a perfectly sharp uh i'm sorry my belt sander to make sure i got a perfectly sharp tip on it and now i'm going to mark this line uh on the piece of metal um and that's going to help me index the machine make sure that it's parallel when i put the metal when i slide the metal back in i'm going to pay particular attention to make sure i got a really dark line where they overlap the point where the starting point for the first cut and second cut are the same i'm going to run this line the whole length of the metal okay so the biggest piece that i'm going to cut is just under 29 inches so i'm going to come over here i'm going to mark off just over 29 inches and that is going to be my reference that's my start point for all of or my zero point for all my cuts uh that way if i'm cutting later on and i get lost on the sheet or something like that let's say that the program crashes i can come back to this point now and zero zeroed out and then go and continue my cuts you know sometimes if the fire control will just shut down and you will lose your zero point now i can come back to that point and say here's where you were when you were at zero and then we'll try and start over the cut and maybe that'll save us from losing the whole sheet uh during the cut so this next step what i want to do is i want to make the sheet perpendicular to the travel of the gantry to do that what i want to do is i'm going to bring the tip of the nozzle right on top of down on top of that line uh that i drew earlier all the way down the uh the side of the sheet the problem is is that the very tip of the nozzle is like you know 3 8 of an inch or something like that it's a big piece i really can't have a hard time zeroing in on that line so what i did is i went to my 3d printer and i printed out just this little slug that i can simulate the uh the nozzle with the nozzle of the uh the razor weld uh torch is one inch in diameter so i made this piece one inch in a diameter also and i just put a point on a really sharp point and that way as i bring this thing down i can really accurately tell exactly where the center of the torch will be when i put that back into the machine i printed this thing out i have a creality ender 3 3d printer if you don't have one of those for your shop you should get one check out my tool tips for the first one where i show you how to basically for about 200 dollars be printing out stuff like this uh in your garage and i got all kinds of tools that i've made with that uh that ender three now that i have that thing in there now i can zero in super close to uh that line what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna put it right over top that line and once it's there now i'm gonna go ahead and speed the machine up a little bit and i'm going to run it down the sheet and if it diverges from the line one way or the other then i know that it's not parallel or perpendicular to the gantry in this case that tip of that of that slug is traveling right down the line perfectly and so now i know that the sheet or at least this line that i've marked on the sheet is perpendicular with the gantry now i can bring that tip right over top of that lot that little mark i made at 29 inches zero out the machine and then now i'm ready to cut uh and then when i come back around i open another program and i slide the sheet and i go right back to that point again then i know i'm starting from the exact same point i can just cut the opposite direction and that's how i'll index it i know there are guys that are using uh index pins and those kinds of things this is just a way that you could do this without having to modify your table which i think it'd be kind of difficult especially with the water table that comes on the crossfire pro [Music] okay so i've run this thing back and forth down this line and it is absolutely perpendicular now to the gantry the plate metal is and i've run this also this other line here i'm going to bring the tip now to that line and zero out all the axises and now i know that this right here is going to be my xyz 0. in case i get lost anywhere on the sheet let's go ahead and bring it back and then i'm gonna swap out the the torches and get ready to cut [Music] do so i don't normally do this on all my cuts but i am going to run one practice cut really quick just to make sure that it is uh working so what i'll do is i left the torch off i also came in here and i turned off the torch height control um the there's a g-code on there let's go ahead and see what it does is i hit the plane you'll kind of see uh as it jogs over it'll do so it starts at its xyz zero or at least it's x and y zero it's gonna jog over drop down it's gonna do its uh it's gonna fire the torch and then come in so let's go ahead and watch uh as that goes here [Music] and so i'm really kind of going through this process to make sure that as it's going i'm watching the torch and how it goes i want you to make sure that the fire control doesn't crash so if it crashes later i know it's because of some kind of electromagnetic interference that's going on but i'm also kind of watching the cables back over here making sure there's no binding because i move the table around a little bit making sure it's not pulling too much on the cables here it's not pulling the torch around which will give me um some quality issues there so once it goes through the whole program i'm gonna make sure that it'll go back to the xyz zero and once it does i can go ahead and start making the real [Music] cuts [Music] one last run into the checklist before i get going the computer is good to go i got the green lights here for the the torch height control and also the crossfire the program i wanted is is loaded it makes sense i've run a practice run i've rebooted the computer the only thing running on the computer right now is fire control nothing else that caused any problems i got the compressor going it is plugged in and ready to go runs air all the way to the machine you can hear the uh the plasma cutter is running i'm grounded to my piece everything's clear and got fans ready to go for air to blow air through here got my glasses ready it's time to cut so i need to cut four of these so the torches have stopped it's finished the other program i'm going to come over here and i'm going to say go to the xy0 and send it back to its starting point now what i want to do is this piece is five and a half inches wide i want to jog it 5.5 5.75 inches to the right i've kind of put my little decoder ring here for which way it goes when i put the the values in so with those values i know i want to move it in the x-axis i want to go ahead and select this over here and i want to tell the torso i think i'm telling it is that it isn't negative 5.75 inches and so i basically i've told it hey torch you're off the side of the sheet now once i have it there i'm going to go ahead and say now go to the xyz 0 and now it's going to jog it over exactly 5.75 inches and i'm going to continue doing that and you can see now if for some reason the torch gets lost i can go back to that initial point that i have over here zero everything out and i keep going over 5.75 inches until i get back to the cut whichever one i'm on let's go ahead and do the second cut so while this cut is going i'm just sitting back and watching it and everything is running really well and i think the reason that it is is because i restart my computer before i start cutting and that restart just seems to clear everything out and then i only open fire control i don't have fusion 360 or anything else running in the background just fire control and that seems to have eliminated all of my frozen fire control problems well i don't know if you could tell from my voice i'm pretty nervous about this cut because as you can see this takes up the full 3 16 sheet of plate now it's only going to be about a little over five feet of a plate being cut but the four and a half feet wide you know it's over a little over a hundred dollars of steel and so far working really good don't want to jinx myself now i got to move the sheet one thing i did is since all these pieces are going to be dangling off the edge i just put a piece of wood across the bottom just to catch them especially as i do the second cut if they drop off i don't want them to start bouncing around and affecting the machine so i just put that little piece there and then also if you're like me and you can't find help sometimes you're out in your shop by yourself having to move a sheet of plate how do you scoot this thing across the table without moving the table and messing everything up what i'm going to do is i got this work stand here i got the roller i have it set just slightly above the work bed and so now as i lift the other side i should just be able to roll it down and put it into the the next position so okay before i start the next cut a couple little jobs i'm gonna do first off is i'm gonna go ahead and pull the other plasma torch out i'm gonna put that plug back in there because i'm gonna use that again to find myself right back here at the original uh x y zero points and put that plug right back in there lightly tighten it down and then also on here the torch you know the cup i'm just gonna go ahead and clean it off with my hands get that that clean but since this is a big cut you know i'm just going to go ahead right now pull out the electrode and the um and the nozzle and go ahead and replace those just because it's such a expensive cut i want to make sure i have new consumables for the second half of that just a couple bucks for a little bit of a little bit of insurance there [Music] so the nozzle doesn't want to come off there we go now you're out and again uh for those who didn't see episode two i'm just using the the standard hypotherm stuff that comes right with the manual for the razer weld for this and i i find the best prices and easiest way to get it is just on ebay so i've got that i've also got in an order for a new machine i think they call it a shield right here and then also a swirl cup also although those things seem like they've been doing pretty good i haven't had any problems with those but first let's go ahead and zero in this uh dummy plasma torch right here with the needle right on that x y zero so step one to true in this thing with the other table is to make sure that the plate again for the second pass is again that line is absolutely perpendicular to the travel of the gantry so if you can look down here i have the tip of the little slug that i made exactly over the line now what i'm going to do first a little bit i'm going to bring this all the way down the line and make sure that it is again absolutely right on that line again and if you look you can kind of see that it is just slightly and ever so slightly to the left of the line so now what i'm going to do is i'm going to grab the whole piece of still the whole plate and i'm going to try to shift it just a nudge nudge it over and then i'm going to run it back i'm going to re-center it run it back to the other side and i'm going to keep doing that until that thing stays right on until it stays right on that line going back and forth and then i'm sure that the plate still is perpendicular to the travel of the gantry okay after running it back and forth about three times and just nudging this around i think i'm i'm so close it's less than the width of the uh the mark of the pencil so i think that's pretty good and that's important because that air will compound itself as this thing travels down in the uh the y-axis so as i continue going down this line right here if i have an error on this line it'll compound itself fortunately it won't be any greater you know just kind of using some right triangle types if if i'm off by 64 or 60 uh yeah 64th on the extreme on this end they'll only get off my 64th on the stream on the other end now what i'm going to do is i'm going to go ahead and line the tip of that thing up with the second line which is the uh the x axis once i have that i'm back to the original zero and now i can just start cutting just like i did just the uh i'm going to cut the the other sides of the trailing arm so now that the slug here is marking perfectly that it's on the original x and y axis i'm gonna go ahead and take it out and replace it with the uh with the plasma torch and then now this thing should be zeroed out pretty much right at this exact same point pretty darn close to it um once i have this thing in here what i'm going to do is i'm going to go ahead and just run the whole uh the whole cut on a test without the the torch firing and make sure that it's going to line everything up and it should be ready to go as i tighten this thing down i kind of wiggle the torch around just a little bit to make sure that there's no play in it just really lightly because i don't like to mess with the uh x-axis too much and put too much force on anything that's fragile let's go and try it out all right so i've turned off the torch height control the plasma cutter is off so it won't fire i'm gonna go ahead and start and again i'm looking for kind of the same thing i'm looking for hey is it going the right way the way i expected the cut does it look like it's lining up is it going parallel right down that line like i wanted to and then also as i'm going to the other extreme of this table this time is it going to pull the cable for the plasma cutter and take it out of true obviously a machine torch would do a little bit better but just if you watch this and you're careful i think you do just fine with a hand torch on all these cuts and then just kind of watching all the cables making sure nothing's going to bind up the program is doing what i expected to and it sure is so once it comes back around i think we'll be ready to uh to make all the next cuts no pressure all right looks good we're ready to go i'm gonna go ahead and send it back to x y zero it's back at that point we're ready to go here's a telltale if at the end of this cut those lines are perfect then we're doing good let's check it out see how it does well here's the result i think it's pretty close i'm welding through that anyway if you're trying to make a sign or something like that you need perfect edges you might be able to sand that down and still be happy with it but since i'm welding through it that'll be easy to cover that super happy with how they lined up it came out awesome there was so much stress in that cut it came out really really good if you can see i was kind of hitting it here and then as i get a little bit closer you can see it kind of misses it just a little bit and i actually don't even catch it until it comes all the way over here and then i tell it hey man why don't you just nudge over about point zero two inches and then it just started lining up those lines really good so you just gotta kind of watch it this is the kind of cut that you're doing but man i am so happy there's so much stress here this is i don't know how much money this still cost but it was quite a bit and the fact that the landmark systems are perfect now if you see it right beginning i did have a torch misfire it didn't fire that wasn't a problem with landmark systems that was a problem with the torch when i think that it was um one i changed out the electrode again to make sure that wasn't what it was i don't think that was it but uh there was this little uh this connector right down here which i think might be the torch fire i'm gonna go ahead and check it out real quick but uh that was just a little bit loose i just tightened that up and made sure all the connections were tightened i cycled the power of the plasma cutter on and off and then it just worked you saw it did the full cut and man super happy the this thing can cut things longer than 33 inches and do it really well i never thought making a cut like that could be so stressful and i'm so glad that it worked and now you can see on the j10 racetrack behind me what those trailing arms look like in place now i know whatever project you're doing is probably not the same that i am doing so you're not going to tackle the problem the same way but maybe in this video you learned some tricks along the way that you think might help you solve whatever problems you're working on on your own build just some final thoughts uh first off anything i talked about on the video i have a link in my description i'm an amazon affiliate and i get a kickback if you uh you purchase that including the 3d uh printer which if you don't have one of those especially as a builder if you're a guy that has lagmire systems uh the crossfire pro you probably need a 3d printer also they're super easy to use use the same software with fusion 360 to generate the code and you can just make so many cool parts one more thing there's a lot of video content i've had here so far so if you're one of the guys who's watching this as a langmar assistance video there are a lot of other videos where i'm using the plasma table to make the spindles the steering system upper lower suspension for the j10 race truck if you want to follow along you'll learn some really cool things some other things that i'm doing also is i just started using the bentek software you can see i got the roll cage construction going on behind me and i'll be making a couple videos on how to make bentek uh and how to make tube still do what you wanted to do so i gotta get back to my build i'm just under two months until i gotta have this thing ready for the baja 1000 so a lot of pressure is on a lot of guys coming from all over the world to help me drive this truck it's really exciting hopefully you'll follow along in future videos with that please don't forget to hit the like and subscribe button we'll see you on future episodes take care of yourself [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: NTD Racing

Views: 43,991

Keywords: index cutting, baja 1000, Langmuir Systems, CrossFire, CrossFire Pro, Fusion 360, cnc plasma cutter, plasma cutter, index cutting machine, plasma cutting, creality ender 3, jeep, Score international, langmuir systems crossfire pro, cnc plasma table, low cost, high quality, off road, langmuir systems crossfire pro plasma table, cnc plasma table reviews, cnc plasma table projects, off road trucks, off road racing

Id: OmByODAlPGE

Length: 32min 7sec (1927 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 10 2020