A friend uses his router table to do plasma work in his house basement / workshop. He
replaces a spoil board section with a water pan, which has a drain, uses decking boards with
evenly spaced nails sticking up to support the work. He uses an axial fan which attaches to a make
shift hood above the table and table and simple pull down clear shades to keep debri and fumes
inside the curtain area ( the router table is not ruined form plasma use) and draw out
exhaust fumes to outside.
He uses a macro to touch and fire the torch which is done using a macro.
So the macro provides probing, removes floating head travel and sets the Z height, and
acivates a output from Mach3 to fire the torch.
Controller is located close / under the table, the plasma machine about 4 feet away from the
table with the computer about 8 feet away from both the table and plasma machine. Has no
problems with fumes, sparks, electronics interference, etc.
You can use LazyCam to generate good gcode but to use the Plasma module you will need
a pro license. In use you import dxf and use the mill module as normal but prior to posting use
the plasma module as that has imputs for torch specifics. I didn't put a plasma module use section in the manual.
So he has both worlds and frankly for min investment realy dose nice work with both machines.
It is a stepper system. You don't need to spend a fortune to do things sometimes. I must note that he
was a professional welder and knows how to set up a plasma machine to work correctly and
that in itself is half the battle to do good cutting with it.
Personaly don't use a plasma machine but thought this info would be of value.
RICH