Manual

Appendix B: Serial Communication Spirit II User’s Manual
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B-2
look up the Set Cutting Pierce Time command in the command table. You will see the
following table entry:
Command
#
Hex String
Additional Information
Set Pierce Time
4
AA nn FA 04 -- -- 0D
Time in mS (seconds / 1000)
Valid range: 0 to 5000
Once again, AA hex signifies the start of the command, “nn” is the net node of the
power supply, and FA hex is the Spirit identifier. The value 04 hex signifies the Set
Pierce Time command, and 0D hex signifies the end of the command. The “-- --” in the
hex string is the MSB followed by the LSB of a type int. The integer is the value used in
the additional information column. Thus, the “-- --” is sometimes referred to as the
additional information value. In the example, we wanted to transmit a pierce time of
1000 mS (1 second). This value in hexadecimal would be 03E8 (msb=03, lsb=E8). In
this example, the following string would be transmitted in order to set the pierce time to
1000mS for a power supply on net node 1:
AA 01 FA 04 03 E8 0D
For multiple power supply installations, commands can be sent to all power supplies at
the same time. This is referred to as a global command. To send a global command,
set the net node value to C8 hex (200 decimal). In the example above, the following
string would be transmitted to set the pierce time to 1000mS for all power supplies
connected on the network:
AA C8 FA 04 03 E8 0D
Communication Error Checking
With a single torch system, all commands and parameters transmitted to the Spirit will
be back transmitted in exactly the same form for error checking. With a multiple torch
system, only the system with node focus will back transmit the commands. The
purpose of the node focus command (#254) is to allow one Spirit system to use the
transmission lines at a time. If no node focus is set on initialization, the first system to
receive a command will receive node focus automatically. Commands may be
transmitted to systems without node focus, but there will be no back transmission from
those systems. Also, all parameters can be read at any time by transmitting a Send
Parameter command (#30) to the Spirit, followed by the appropriate parameter to be
read.