CNC Plasma Table Using Cut50 Cheapo plasma cutter

[MeJasonT]

I started work on this project as I had one specific thing in mind.
I wanted to cut out a plate of a ploughman with horses and plough to put on my father’s grave.
He had farmed for 89 years on the home farm in Cumbria Uk, the significance of the horse and plough was that in 1957 he was the world horse ploughing champion, he won again in 1958, lost to Canada in 1959 (which he said was a fix, apparently the award was given before all the competitors had finished and before their time was up). However he did win it back in 1960. So the seed was planted for a plasma cutter.
Having built a 3D printer I decided that CNC was a piece of cake, I had a friend who works for a paint factory who provided me with some nice stepper motors and H bridge controllers and the rest just happened.
The guts of the machine is a GRBL based controller (many thanks to those guys for their excellent work and their willingness to share it).
The thing that makes my machine different is that I have used a cheap 50A HF start Plasma cutter and managed to overcome the High frequency noise affecting the electronics by controlling the plasma unit by means of fibre optic.
The HF start was converted to Pilot ark by grounding the electrode for 0.5 seconds to strike the ark, I used a very nice motorcycle starter motor to switch the contact which is capable of handling 600A for 10 seconds.
It is my intention to publish all of my drawings and work for this project in due course.
There is still some work to do, calibration, dispelling gremlins etc.

http://bengler.no/grbl
https://github.com/grbl/grbl
https://github.com/gerritv/Grbl-Panel/wiki