CNC plasma cutter down 4/9/2026

The cutter head fell off in the middle of a cut, also it appears to be wildly inaccurate, in the pictures below the hexagonal hole in the hexagonal plate is supposed to be centered, the long edge on the other pieces is supposed to be straight, and the holes are supposed to be round and contained within the pieces.

For a little more info about how much error I was seeing, the first two cuts were the hexagonal piece, and the smaller one is about 3/8” off center, the larger hexagon is 2 1/4” long. for the lines which are supposed to be straight, the two worst offenders missed meeting up by 1/8”

The head is designed to breakaway if it hits an obstacle, such as a tip up. Was it dragging before? It’s conceivable that if it was dragging, that would also cause a loss of position or cause the work to be dragged.

The amount of dross also looks like your travel speed was too slow. We tend to be cautious on new parts or when working with a thickness that we aren’t familiar with, but that’s reason for some test cuts to get the settings right.

Did you try a dry run on gcode before running? Try to get the work piece as level as possible and preference dialed in enough so that it is able to dry run without dragging. I calculated the float switch offset preference to ~3.5mm today by manual jogging and was able to cut a metric wrench from the example folder. I was also able to enable torch height control but the strike height needs to be at least somewhat close to the recommended value to get started.There used to be magnetic break away connecting the torch to the z axis plate but currently the double sided tape is doing that job.